Holkham Beach
Four miles of sand, dune and pinewood inside Holkham National Nature Reserve, reached by the boardwalk through the Meals from Lady Anne's Drive. Dogs are welcome the year round and most of the bay is open to off-lead walking under close control, which is why this is the beach dog owners drive across three counties for. Pay-and-display parking on Lady Anne's Drive, from £3.80 for two hours.
Holkham Gap, the pines and the beach circular
Four and a half miles and a little over two hours, all of it flat, on boardwalk, open sand and the sheltered track behind the Corsican pines that Holkham planted to hold the dunes together. It starts on Lady Anne's Drive off the A149, a pay-and-display strip of several hundred spaces that costs £3.80 for two hours and £14 all day and is full by late morning on summer weekends. Dogs are welcome all year and more than seventy per cent of the beach stays open to off-lead walking under close control, but from 1 April to 31 August leads are required in the marked breeding zones at Holkham Gap and Gun Hill, the roped cordons around nesting terns, oystercatchers and ringed plovers must not be entered, and the grazing marsh either side of Lady Anne's Drive usually holds cattle.
Holkham Park, the obelisk and the Great Barn
Five miles of estate roads, gravel farm tracks and rough parkland grass, about two and a half hours, taking in the lake, the obelisk on its ridge, Samuel Wyatt's Great Barn and the thatched ice house. Park on Lady Anne's Drive and walk in under the arch, or use the estate car park by the Walled Garden when the hall and gardens are open; the marked routes are colour-coded from there and a map is downloadable. Holkham asks that dogs are kept on a short lead at all times anywhere in the park because of the free-roaming fallow deer herd and the hundreds of geese and goslings, so this is a lead walk from gate to gate, with the lake the only reliable drink.