Pippin, St Ives

Pippin is a small cottage in Lelant, a quiet village across the estuary from St Ives, and it is set up for dogs in the way that places used to hosting them tend to be. The garden at the back is walled and secure, and it comes up again and again as the thing that made the holiday relaxing - dogs in the habit of finding a way through a fence did not find one here. There are bowls waiting in the kitchen, and the booking is kept to one well-behaved dog, so it suits a single-dog household rather than a pack.

The location is what earns Pippin its 4.8/5 paw rating. Porthkidney Sands, a wide dog-friendly beach, is about ten minutes on foot down the hill, and the coast path carries on from there towards St Ives if you want a longer morning. Lelant station sits at the bottom of the same road and the branch line runs into town in around eight minutes, which spares you St Ives parking entirely. The pub directly opposite has a beer garden where dogs are welcome, and it comes up in nearly every account as the reason people stopped bothering to cook.

Inside it is a proper old cottage: woodburner, comfortable beds, a well-stocked kitchen and a bathroom on the ground floor rather than upstairs. There is no washing machine, which matters more than it sounds on a beach holiday with a wet dog - the nearest laundrette is a couple of miles away at Hayle.

Two things to weigh. Housekeeping has been inconsistent: guests have found dog hair worked into the sofas and a lingering wet-dog smell, along with dust under the furniture and marked bedding, though a more recent stay reported the standard had clearly picked up. And the lane outside is narrow with no pavement, and cars come down it towards the station faster than they should, so it is a lead-on-the-doorstep sort of place. Best suited to one dog, a family who wants beach and coast path rather than town, and anyone happy to travel by train and bus.