Oscar's Snugs, Unsworth's Yard, Cartmel

A country manor bed and breakfast half a mile up the lane from Cartmel Priory, with four first-floor rooms, numbers five to eight, kept for guests with dogs. One dog per room at twenty-five pounds a night, paid when the room is reserved, and the house provides its own sanitised dog beds rather than allowing guests to bring their own. Dogs may use Bamford's, the dog owners' sitting room, and the courtyard beside it, and may join you at breakfast by arrangement with the house manager, but not the other public rooms. There is a dog wash with hot and cold water for after the walk, and a dog-sitting service at twenty-five pounds an hour with a three-hour minimum.

Three and a half miles and an hour and a half, a hundred metres of climb: out of the square past the priory, round the outside of the little steeplechase course and back by the field paths and the beck. Start in Cartmel village square - the racecourse car park is free and enormous on non-race days but closed when there is a meeting, and the village itself has almost no parking, so check the fixture list before you set off. It is gentle, low-level and short, which suits an old dog, and the beck gives a drink at two points; the course perimeter is grazed by sheep out of season and there are cattle in the fields towards Aynsome, so leads for most of the middle section.