How to plan the ultimate dog-friendly trip
I'm giving away my secrets, but I hope you'll still buy my books.
Planning dog-friendly holidays can be a bit of a minefield. I’m very much in the business of de-arming those mines for you through my books, but I’m not about to write an entire 500-word newsletter on why you should buy them — hopefully, you already own them, or you at least know why they’re worth investing in (months of hard work and deep research goes into each etc etc). My books can’t cover everything and everywhere you may want to go, so this newsletter is about to equip you with the tools to plan your own dog-friendly escapes.
Having planned trips across Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy (by train!), Belgium the Netherlands and the UK over the last five years, I’ve become adept at finding brilliant dog-friendly places and walks without having to search too hard. So, with a little risk of putting myself out of business, here are my not-so-secret secrets to planning a stress-free dog-friendly break:
1. Google Maps is your friend
No more phoning ahead to check on dog policies! Chuck the phrase “dog friendly” into Google Maps and it’ll handily bring up a bunch of hotels and restaurants that others have confirmed are indeed dog-friendly. However, this isn’t the only way I use Google Maps to plan a trip. If I’ve spotted somewhere in my destination that I want to visit — perhaps a museum, say — I’ll look it up on Google Maps, click into the reviews, and then use the magnifying glass to search within the reviews for the word ‘dog’. I’ll either get one of two things: no results with the word ‘dog’, or lots of results saying things like ‘super dog-friendly’ or ‘even the dog was allowed’ (and occasionally it’ll be reviews that say ‘too many dogs’; sorry not sorry, etc). Much of my time spent researching before I travel involves this very method, and I can confirm it’s a solid way to decipher the dog-friendly from the not.
2. AllTrails+ is essential
This app is free, but for an upgrade of £36 a year you can get access to thousands of tried and tested walks from other ramblers with all the info you need. There’s a dog-friendly filter in AllTrails so you can select only trails that will be suitable for dog owners, and you can also filter by length, distance from your current location, and grade (eg. really bloody sweaty walks versus gentle strolls). This app has been a mainstay on my phone homescreen and when I’m not scrolling on Instagram, I’m often in AllTrails figuring out which hike we’ll do next. The plus version (not ‘Peak’ which is super expensive) is essential for a full understanding of the terrain you’re going to be walking.
3. Dig out the dog policy
We all know this by now: lots of places say they’re dog-friendly when really they’re no more than tolerant towards our pets. “Only allowed in the kitchen” at the holiday cottage, “not allowed to toilet on the lawn” at the glamping place, or “not allowed in the bar or restaurant” at the hotel are policies only vaguely dog tolerant places employ. But no doubt every single one of those places will still say “Yes, we’re dog-friendly!” That’s why it’s so important to learn these things in advance. Before you pick up the phone to find out, do a quick Google to save yourself some time: type in the name of your desired hotel or glampsite along with the term “dog policy” and more often than not they’ll have it published in the darkest depths of their website, only to be found by the Google indexer for fear they might put people off with their silly rules.
4. Find a field
This is my beige flag: I get excited when there’s a new enclosed dog field to try. I’m not ashamed — it makes my life, and my trips, so much easier. I’m always cautious about letting Arty off the lead in new places, unless it’s a lawned park or a beach. He will chase anything that moves, which means if there’s a cliff, river, ditch, quicksand or bridge troll demanding we answer several questions before we can cross, he could run into trouble. It’s also not okay to let him chase wildlife or livestock, so I’m reluctant to let him run free without making sure there’s none of that in the area.
That means his off-lead time is incredibly limited on our travels, and so the dog fields for hire are our saviours. I often check British Dog Fields to see what’s nearby, but I also use Google Maps (again) to see if there’s anything locally — usually a search with “dog field” works a treat. We book these on our travel days, early in the morning before we depart a campsite, or late in the afternoon after we’ve arrived, set up camp and the dog needs a good run after a few hours in the car.
5. Find waymarked walks
If you don’t fancy map reading or aimless wandering (flâneur-ing as the French call it), waymarked walks are the way forward. Despite the fact I can read a map, have all the map app subscriptions necessary and actually enjoy a little light navigation, I’m still prone to getting lost, so when I see a waymarked walk I’m thrilled. Sometimes towns or villages will have created their own waymarked trails — details are usually found on information boards in urban centres — but the most common places to find waymarked routes are in places like National Trust properties, government forestry property (that’s Forestry England, Forestry and Land Scotland or Natural Resources Wales) and privately owned stately homes or estates (see Ford & Etal Estate, for example).
6. Learn to read an OS Map
I never bother with paper maps these days (sorry, carto friends). That’s largely because Ordnance Survey has an excellent app (£35 a year, bargain!) that offers a vast overview of the public rights of way with the local geography you need to plan a safe hike (it’s worth getting this alongside the AllTrails subscription as the latter can be a little unreliable when it comes to sending you down private roads in England and Wales).
I learned to read an OS Map when I was in my teens during my Duke of Edinburgh endeavours (I got silver, don’t you know), and it was the single best thing my school ever did for me. It means I can set out on a walk and I don’t need to follow that blue dot (or pink arrow, as it often is in the OS app) — I can tell I’m going the right way based on what’s displayed on the map and what I’m seeing with my eyes (most of the time). This makes dog walks much more enjoyable: I can keep my eyes on the trail and not the phone. If you want to enjoy your dog walks in new places more, and there’s no waymarking available, this is my top tip.
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Of course, you don’t need to do any of the above if you buy my books, really. So if you can’t be arsed to plan your own holidays, here’s the only guides you’ll need:
Dog-Friendly Weekends: 50 breaks in Britain for you & your dog
Dog Days Out: 365 things to do with your dog in the UK & Ireland
Dog-Friendly Europe, Dog-Friendly Weekends: Cotswolds and Dog-Friendly Weekends: Scotland will be released in 2026. Keep an eye out here for updates.