Pottery Barn, Branscombe

Pottery Barn is a converted barn tucked into the valley at Branscombe, one of the prettier villages on the East Devon coast, and its selling point for dog owners is space. The grounds are generous - a large garden and a green field that dogs get the run of - and guests travelling with dogs come back year after year for exactly that.

Up to two dogs can stay. How enclosed those grounds actually are depends on your dog, and guest accounts genuinely differ: many describe the garden as large and safely enclosed, while others report that a small dog can squeeze out under the gate, making it somewhere to supervise rather than somewhere to leave a dog unattended. There is also no private outdoor area belonging solely to the barn, and the owners, who live next door, keep several large dogs of their own that roam the grounds. Most guests find them charming, but anyone arriving with a nervous or reactive dog would want to know in advance.

The single most useful thing to know before booking is the lane. Branscombe is reached by a narrow, hedge-lined road with passing traffic, and the stretch from the barn down to the village is not safe to walk a dog along, so guests consistently end up driving rather than setting off on foot from the door. Once you are down there, Branscombe beach is about half an hour's walk with a cafe at the bottom, and there are two village pubs, a working thatched forge and the Donkey Sanctuary a short drive away.

The barn itself is warm and comfortable with a log fire and a well-stocked kitchen, and flowers, scones and clotted cream are left for arrival. Its quirks are structural: the upstairs ceilings slope steeply enough that tall guests bump their heads, the bathrooms are built into the eaves, there are baths rather than walk-in showers, and there is no freezer or village shop to fall back on.

Pottery Barn suits dog owners happy to drive to their walks and to keep an eye on a small dog in the garden. Take those two things as read and it earns its 4.6/5 paw rating.