Dog-friendly Maltby

Seven hectares of limestone common on the south-east edge of Maltby, held by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and carrying three different grassland types on the same site — calcareous, acid and neutral — with fen meadow in the wet hollows. Over four hundred insect species have been recorded here, and grass-of-Parnassus and common spotted orchid flower from June. A footpath links the Low Common to the adjoining Far Common, which makes a circular walk of about two miles, and Maltby Wood just over the railway line is full of woodland flowers in spring if you want to extend it. The paths are flat but genuinely waterlogged for much of the year and are no use for a wheelchair or a pushchair.

The ruins of a Cistercian abbey in a narrow limestone valley below Maltby, with the transept walls still standing to full height and Maltby Beck running through the middle of the site past a set of small waterfalls. English Heritage lists it among its dog-friendly places and entry is free, which makes it an unusually good stop with a dog for an abbey of this rank. The grounds are grass and gravel and mostly level once you are down in the valley, and the walk in from the free car park is about 250 metres on a rough path. Capability Brown landscaped the valley in the 1770s, which is why the ruins sit in mown lawn rather than rubble.