Although Press Mains is a lovely place, even we go away on holiday from time to time. So, like many of you, we look for a dog friendly holiday cottage in our chosen destination and do our best to make sure our dogs will enjoy the stay as much as we do.

However, over the last few years, we have been surprised that what some people describe as a dog friendly holiday cottage turns out to be far from it. There was the dog friendly holiday cottage with no garden, next to a main road with only a flimsy hedge separating the outside space from the fast moving traffic. Nothing in the particulars made this clear. Then there was the one which said it had a dog friendly garden which our inveterate escapees had found their way out of in just a few minutes because there were large gaps under the hedges and no fencing. Admittedly, this may have been an oversight on our part but retrieving the dogs as they ran around a village was not quite how we had intended to start our holiday.

So, please be assured that when we say that each of ours is a dog friendly holiday cottage, you can believe that we have done our level best to make it so. Firstly, we have loads of outdoor space with individually fenced gardens, directly accessed from each cottage. Then there are the miles of paths and tracks around the farm which all our visitors are welcome to use. We have bowls and biscuit jars in each cottage and hose pipes at the door to wash off paws after a muddy walk. But we also get that dogs do shed fur and that there will be the occasional pawprint. Yes, we do charge a little extra for those who bring dogs but that simply covers the cost of extra cleaning.

If dogs are well behaved we will even allow more than two dogs. This may need to be discussed at the time of booking but is never usually a problem. If you look online, this seems to be a rare thing.

Like anywhere else, we do ask that bags or shovels are used to keep the gardens and area around the cottages poo-free. We also ask that dogs are not walked through fields with livestock and that if your dog is likely to chase rabbbits and hares that they are kept on a lead, as much for their safety as ours.

But we understand that most people who go on holiday in the UK want to take their pets with them. We’ve even had cats to stay too. So we really do welcome dogs and hope that our visitors will continue to bring them on holiday. So if you are looking for a dog friendly holiday cottage, look no further.