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Thetford Forest sits on the Suffolk and Norfolk border, and Forestry England calls it the largest lowland man-made forest in England. It was first planted in the 1920s to rebuild the nation’s timber supply after the First World War. For a dog that means pine, sandy tracks and a lot of ground to cover. Rules

Grey seals haul out on the beach at Horsey, on the Norfolk coast, and pups arrive from late October into January. It’s a wonderful sight, and it’s also the reason dog owners need to read the rules: the charity Friends of Horsey Seals asks owners to keep dogs on leads whenever seals are nearby, and

Ashridge Estate, on the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire border, is the sort of place where a dog can go from woodland to open chalk hillside in one walk. The National Trust warns that wild deer can appear anywhere on the estate at any time, so if your dog is off the lead it needs to be

Windsor Great Park is a lovely place to spend a morning with a dog. The park’s own guidance says well-behaved dogs are welcome in the park and forest, but some areas, including the Deer Park, are on-lead only, so it pays to look at the park map before you set off. Figo would happily ignore

On a breezy day the ridge at Dunstable Downs fills with people flying kites, and it’s easy to see why. This National Trust site is known for its rolling chalk grassland and sweeping views across the Aylesbury Vale, and dogs are welcome on the Downs, though they need to be on leads inside the visitor

Red kites were reintroduced to the Chilterns in a programme that ran from 1989 to 1994, and today they wheel over the hills in numbers that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. Buckinghamshire sits on the southern edge of that landscape, with beech woods, chalk slopes and quiet villages. Milton Keynes, in the

Newcastle’s Town Moor covers around 400 hectares, close to a thousand acres of open grass right beside the city centre, and the city’s freemen still have the right to graze cattle on it. That right is believed to be roughly a thousand years old, which makes the cows the longest-standing residents on your dog walk.

The coast here moves. The Holderness shoreline between Bridlington and Withernsea is often described as among the fastest-eroding in Europe, so the beach you walked last year may not be quite where you remember it. Inland, the East Riding is a different world of chalk wolds, flat farmland and long skies, with footpaths that often

Cambridgeshire is famously flat, which makes the big skies easy to enjoy and a dog’s mid-walk sprint easy to follow. At Wicken Fen, one of the best-known spots in the county, Konik ponies and Highland cattle graze Adventurers’ Fen, and dogs under close control are welcome on the reserve paths. It’s a good place to

Climb to Old Pale in Delamere Forest on a clear day and the view takes in twelve counties and metropolitan boroughs across England and Wales. Delamere is the largest area of woodland in Cheshire, at around 2,400 acres, and it’s a good reminder that this county is far more than its flat plain suggests, whichever