Tower Cottage, Pembroke

Tower Cottage is a converted studio standing beside the owners' own cottage in Warren, a small village on the south Pembrokeshire coast a few miles out from Pembroke. It is one bright room rather than a house, which suits a couple with a single dog and would be tight with more. The sandy beaches and the Pembrokeshire Coast Path are about fifteen minutes away by car, and the lanes around the village are quiet enough for a last walk after dark.

The garden is both the draw and the thing to plan around. It is shared with the owners, beautifully kept, and has enough sheltered corners to sit out in with a book - but it is not fully fenced, so a dog with unreliable recall needs to stay on a lead in it. There is an enclosed side lawn, shared rather than private, which helps for a quick let-out, though it is not the whole garden. Guests with dogs raise this themselves and raise it kindly: it reads as a practical caveat rather than a complaint. The owners live next door, are warmly and repeatedly praised, and clearly treat dogs as part of the normal run of things.

The honest caution is noise. There is a military firing range close by, and guest accounts of it diverge sharply. Some stays have run into scheduled weekday firing loud enough to make the building vibrate and to carry on into the evening - distressing enough, on one reported stay, that the dog had to be boarded elsewhere for part of the week at the guest's own expense. Others report hearing very little and being entirely untroubled. Firing is scheduled rather than constant, so which week you book is most of the difference, but do not assume it will be inaudible. Range firing times are published in advance, and a dog that is frightened of fireworks or thunder makes checking them essential.

Two smaller things. The studio warms up considerably from midday in hot weather, and more than one party has struggled with it - one cut a stay short - so a summer booking with a thick-coated dog needs a plan for airflow. And the property takes one pet per booking, with no charge stated either way, so confirm that with the owners directly. For a couple with a settled, noise-tolerant dog who want a quiet, well-run base for the Pembrokeshire coast, it is a good choice - and the noise caveat is why it sits at 4.0/5 rather than higher.