Dog-friendly Tickhill

A garden centre with a large cafe on Bawtry Road on the south side of Tickhill, and the most practical indoor stop with a dog anywhere in this corner of the borough. The company publishes the rule plainly: well behaved dogs are permitted in store and in designated areas of the cafes, and those areas have pet drinking stations. Dogs must be kept on a lead throughout the store and you are responsible for clearing up any accident. It opens 9am to 5.30pm Monday to Saturday and 10.30am to 4.30pm on Sunday, with a large free car park, which makes it a sensible meeting point before a walk round Tickhill.

A flat circuit of an old market town, out of the Market Place past the buttercross, down to St Mary's with its fifteenth-century tower, then north up Northgate and back east along Sunderland Street to the millpond, which is the set piece here and always full of ducks. Tickhill Castle is private and there is no public access to the motte, so you look at the gatehouse from Castle Gate and no further; the same applies to the Friary ruins. Everything on the route is council open space or public highway under the Doncaster PSPO, which means a lead on the footpaths round the millpond and a lead in St Mary's churchyard, and dogs out of the fenced play area. It is all pavement and short grass, so it suits a dog that cannot do stiles or rough ground.