The Rising Sun Inn, Clanfield

The Rising Sun Inn is a village pub with rooms at Clanfield in east Hampshire, and its strongest card for a dog owner is where it stands. Queen Elizabeth Country Park and Butser Hill are close enough to reach on foot, with a choice of safe walks starting from the inn itself. That is rarer than it sounds - most dog-friendly pubs of this kind put you in a car before you get anywhere worth walking.

Dogs are welcome in the building and in the bar, and guests travelling with them describe an easy-going, dog-tolerant pub rather than somewhere a dog is grudgingly tolerated. Food is served downstairs and dogs sit with their owners while it is eaten.

There is one thing to settle before you book, because it has caught people out. The only pet term the inn publishes is that dogs are welcome in the pub - no fee listed, no conditions attached to the booking - but a £10 pet charge has been asked for on arrival, treated as compulsory and not mentioned anywhere in the booking terms. Ask about the pet charge when you reserve and get the amount confirmed in writing. It is £10 rather than £100, but nobody enjoys being billed on the doorstep for something they were never told about.

The rooms are basic and small, and the inn sits on a busy village junction, so road noise and voices from the patio carry into the front rooms. Guests report thin provision - a single towel per stay, supplies running out - and service that varies a lot from one visit to the next, and the stairs in an old pub building are hard work. For a walker with a dog who wants a bed, a pint and a hill in the morning and is not fussy about the room, it works well. For anyone expecting a polished country inn, it will not. That balance is what puts it at 3.9/5 paws.