About Find Dog Walks

A guide to good places to let a dog off the lead in parts of England and France, rated on what most dogs love and owners need: space, water, no roads, and somewhere to park.

How places are rated

Each place gets a score out of 100 from open data and web research:

• Away from traffic (25 points): how much of the place is well away from roads (more than 250 m from an A road and 100 m from any other road).
• Space and wild ground (30): size, length of paths, and how much is heath, woodland or rough grass rather than mown park.
• Water (20): a lake, river or stream, and whether dogs are allowed in it.
• Off-lead freedom (15): what the landowner, council or a guide says about leads.
• Parking (10): a public car park on or near it.

A few points come off for grazing livestock, for playgrounds and sports pitches, and for nesting-season lead rules. Once two or more walkers have reported on a place, their verdict moves the score up or down. "Great" means 68 or more, and "Good" 55 or more. The score ranks places against each other. It isn't a safety rating.

Where the information comes from

• Paths, car parks, water and woodland: © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database Licence.
• Green spaces and roads: Ordnance Survey open data, © Crown copyright and database right 2026.
• Open access land, common land and protected heaths: © Natural England, under the Open Government Licence.
• Muddiness: estimated from the British Geological Survey's 1:625,000 geology map. Contains British Geological Survey materials © UKRI 2026.
• Dog rules, livestock and swimming: council, landowner and charity websites, found by AI-assisted research and summarised in our own words with a link to the source.
• SANG lists (green spaces councils provide for dog walkers): council planning pages.
• Photos: Wikimedia Commons, credited on each photo.
• Pubs and cafés near the car park: OpenStreetMap. Dog policies appear only where someone has mapped them.
• Weather for firm and shady suggestions: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).
• Walkers' reports: answers shared by people who walked there, checked by an AI model before they count.

Other areas

The same guide covers Chichester, West Sussex, Morzine in the French Alps, Lille and Dijon. Each is built the same way: named parks, forests, commons, beaches and lakes from OpenStreetMap, countryside walks from car parks, and in the mountains walks from trailhead car parks. Heights come from the Copernicus GLO-30 elevation model (© DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA). Dog rules come from council, commune, tourist office, forest and reserve websites, read in French where needed, and every rule found is re-checked against its source.

Each area has its own warnings: in France the hunting season, the 15 April to 30 June rule for dogs in woods, processionary caterpillars, steep canal banks, and in the Alps guardian dogs, ski pistes and snow; around Chichester the summer beach bans and the harbour mudflats. Map data stops at borders, so the Belgian side of Lille, the Swiss side of the Portes du Soleil and the Hampshire side of Chichester Harbour aren't included.

What it can't tell you

Whether there are cattle in the field today, whether a path has flooded, or whether the car park is full. Nobody from Find Dog Walks has checked these places in person. Always read the signs when you arrive. See the terms of use.

Found a mistake?

Email [email protected] with the place and what's wrong. Corrections from people who walk there are the most useful thing we get.

For businesses

If you run something useful to dog owners near these walks, see advertising on Find Dog Walks.

Last updated 11 November 2026.