Pen and Parchment, Stratford-upon-Avon

The Pen and Parchment is a seventeenth-century pub with rooms at Bridgefoot, right at the bottom of Stratford-upon-Avon where the town meets the river, and dogs are part of the furniture here rather than a tolerated extra. It earns a 4.1/5 paw rating.

The charge is £10 per room, per night - not per dog - which is at the cheap end for a town-centre stay. The pub downstairs is the real draw and it is what makes the place work for dog owners: the food and the atmosphere get consistently warm notices from guests travelling with dogs, and the staff are the most praised thing about the whole operation.

The location is as good as Stratford gets. The theatre, the riverside gardens and the town centre are all on foot, which matters when a dog needs a last walk before bed, and the riverside path gives you somewhere to go that is not a pavement.

The caveats are substantial and they are all about the building. The staircase up to the rooms is steep and narrow, there is no lift, and anyone travelling with a large, elderly or nervous dog should think hard about getting it up and down twice a day. The rooms have no air conditioning and little airflow, and they get genuinely hot in warm weather, which is a serious consideration for a dog in summer. Housekeeping is the other recurring theme - rooms have been reported unclean on arrival, and the smell of a previous occupant's dog has been part of that. Parking is a small car park with a chargeable multi-storey close by.

Best suited to dog owners who want to be in the middle of Stratford at a fair price, who will take a characterful old pub as it comes, and whose dog can manage a steep staircase.