Manod View, Blaenau Ffestiniog

Manod View is a stone terraced cottage in Blaenau Ffestiniog with a walk up to Llyn Manod starting from the doorstep, and the welcome it gives a dog is a properly considered one. Guests arriving with a dog find bowls and treats waiting alongside the wine and tea left out for the humans, plus a folder of local walks that names the routes worth doing. Several describe their dog settling in immediately.

The outdoor space is the thing to understand before you book. The area directly behind the back door is very small. The gravelled terrace that looks in photographs like the garden sits at the top of two flights of steep slate steps, and slate is slippery in the wet, which is a common state of affairs here. Guests with young, sure-footed dogs manage the steps without a second thought. Guests with elderly dogs, or dogs that cannot do stairs, have found the outside space effectively unusable and said so plainly - one party felt the cottage takes dogs without being set up for them. If your dog needs a patch of level ground by the door, this is not the cottage for you.

What it offers instead is position and comfort. There is a dog-friendly pub about two minutes away and a supermarket around seven, parking on the road outside has not been an issue for guests, and the cottage works as a base for the Ffestiniog hills, the lakes, the beaches and the wider national park. Inside it is clean and homely, with comfortable beds, a well-appointed kitchen, a washing machine and a dishwasher.

Not every stay has gone smoothly - bins left full between changeovers have drawn flies in warm weather, and linen has occasionally arrived marked. It rates 4.4 out of 5: a cottage that welcomes a dog warmly, in a building whose outdoor space suits only some of them. Best suited to walkers with an agile dog who will spend the days out rather than in the yard.