Messy Dog Life
& Dog-Friendly Days Out

Winchester has serious historical weight and a surprisingly good spread of indoor dog-welcoming venues. Add the Watercress Line for Saturday and the Cathedral Quarter for Sunday and the weekend practically plans itself.

Bury St Edmunds has a formal dog-friendly scheme, a free medieval abbey at its centre and enough welcoming cafés, pubs and shops to fill a proper weekend. Here's how to make the most of it.

A Norman cathedral, a living history museum covering 350 acres and a solid spread of confirmed indoor dog-friendly cafés and pubs. Durham quietly over-delivers on a weekend away with a dog.

A Victorian spa town with a moor behind it, a heritage railway on the doorstep and a compact centre full of shops and pubs where dogs are actually welcome inside. Ilkley earns a proper weekend.

A medieval castle, a canal basin and enough dog-welcoming cafés and pubs between the two to fill a proper weekend. Here's how to do Skipton with a dog.

I just cannot make up my mind. I have always had girls. Mostly because, growing up, we had Max, a chocolate brown miniature poodle with a very annoying habit of proudly displaying his ‘lipstick’ most evenings. Girls have wonderful soft, lipstick-free tummies and, at least in my experience, are slightly less inclined to disappear over the horizon with selective hearing. So it has always been girls. The first was more happy accident than conscious decision. Ellie was a rescue p