Yew Tree Cottage, Dartmouth

Yew Tree Cottage is a quirky little holiday house in Stoke Fleming, the village on the coast road a few miles south of Dartmouth, and its appeal for anyone travelling with a dog is almost entirely about what lies outside the front door. The coast path starts there. A friendly village pub that serves food is a minute's walk. Five minutes in the other direction there is a park where a dog can run off the lead, with the bus stop into Dartmouth beside it, and Blackpool Sands is a short drive along the coast.

One well-behaved dog is welcome, and arriving guests are met with something: a cream tea, biscuits and prosecco for the adults, sweets for children, and treats put out for the dog. Inside, the cottage is cosy rather than large, with a log burner in the sitting room and a first-floor snug looking out over a field of cattle to the sea, and it is kept genuinely clean.

What has to be said plainly is that there is no private outdoor space. The courtyard is small, shared with neighbours and not enclosed, so every trip outside with the dog is a lead-on trip through ground you do not have to yourself. Most guests treat that as a minor inconvenience and say so directly. One did not, reporting a neighbour in the shared courtyard who was unfriendly to the point of aggression, and concluding that they would not call the cottage pet-friendly at all. Both accounts are worth carrying, because which one you get depends partly on who is next door.

Two other things. The nearest beach operates a seasonal dog ban over the peak summer months, which caught out a family who had walked down expecting access. And one summer stay ran into a serious flying-ant problem in the master bedroom. Yew Tree Cottage suits one steady dog, and owners happy to walk out to the park and the coast path rather than open a back door. It earns a 4.4 out of 5 paw rating.