Dog-Friendly Cottages by County: The UK Map of Where Pets Are Most Welcome
Two in three UK holiday cottages now welcome dogs. We checked all 65,813 published lets and ranked the dog-friendly cottages by county, so you can see exactly where the welcome is warmest, and where a wagging tail still gets turned away.
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Open the full interactive map · jump to the searchable league table of all 61 counties
Every dog owner who has ever booked a holiday knows the routine. You find the cottage, you fall for the cottage, and then you scroll down to the small print and find out the cottage does not want your dog. So we counted. Across the whole of the UK, we looked at 65,813 published holiday cottages and worked out how many actually accept a dog. The figure is 43,442, which is 66.0%, or two in three.
That sounds generous until you flip it round. A third of the country's holiday lets still say no to dogs, in a country with, by UK Pet Food's January 2026 count, 15.5 million of them and a dog in four households out of ten. The plenty of "10,000+ dog-friendly cottages" claims you see elsewhere never tell you the share of the market that takes pets. This does. And the share moves a lot depending on which county you point the lead at.
The headline findings
- 66.0% of UK holiday cottages welcome dogs: 43,442 of 65,813 published lets. Two in three. That is the national benchmark, and it leaves roughly a third of all cottages off-limits to a dog.
- Ceredigion in Wales is the most dog-welcoming county with a large sample, at 77.0% of its 989 cottages. Angus in Scotland scores higher on the raw table (79.5%) but on just 171 lets, so we flag it rather than crown it.
- Wales is the most dog-friendly nation at 68.8%, ahead of Scotland (67.4%) and England (65.3%). Northern Ireland sits lowest at 56.6%.
- Merseyside is the hardest county in Britain to book a dog-friendly cottage, with only 33.8% (49 of 145 lets) accepting pets, the one county where fewer than half do.
- 8,443 UK cottages both welcome dogs and have a hot tub, which is 69.1% of every hot-tub let in the country. A soak and a spaniel are not mutually exclusive.
One caveat we have baked into every figure: percentages are only as good as the sample behind them. We set a floor of 100 lets before a county could be ranked, which leaves 61 of the UK's 111 counties in the league table. The other 50 had too few cottages for a stable rate, so a tiny county posting a flashy percentage does not get to call itself a national winner.
The most dog-welcoming counties
If you want one county to point your satnav at, make it Ceredigion on the Welsh coast. Of its 989 holiday cottages, 762 welcome dogs, a rate of 77.0%. That is the highest figure of any county with a sample large enough to trust, and it is no fluke of small numbers: nearly a thousand lets is a proper sample. Cardigan Bay, the Ceredigion coast path and a string of dog-loving beaches do the rest.
Angus, up on the east coast of Scotland, technically tops the raw table at 79.5%, but it does so on only 171 lets, so treat it as a strong regional signal rather than the national champion. Behind Ceredigion come two north-east England heavyweights: Northumberland at 74.5% (and that is across a hefty 2,557 cottages, so it is both warm and well stocked) and County Durham at 73.9%. Scotland's Fife matches Durham on 73.9%, and then comes the one that surprises people: Norfolk at 73.2%, across more than three thousand lets. For a county with that much choice to sit that high is rare. Most big counties drift down towards the average.
The national picture: four nations, four welcomes
Split the map by nation and a clear order appears. Wales is the most dog-friendly nation in the UK, with 68.8% of its 10,669 cottages accepting dogs. Scotland follows on 67.4%, then England on 65.3%, the only one of the three large-sample nations to dip below the 66.0% UK average, largely because England carries the huge, middling-rate honeypot counties. Northern Ireland sits lowest of all at 56.6%, though with 145 lets it has by far the smallest sample of the four, so read it as indicative rather than damning.
The Welsh result is not driven by one outlier. Ceredigion leads, but Carmarthenshire (72.8%), Gwynedd (71.3% across 2,456 lets) and Anglesey (69.1%) all sit comfortably above the UK line. Wales simply makes a habit of taking dogs.
Where the dog-friendly cottages actually are, by sheer number
Here is the twist, and it is the one worth telling a dog owner before they book. The friendliest counties by rate are not where the dog-friendly cottages mostly are. For raw choice, the staycation giants win hands down. Cornwall has 4,302 dog-friendly cottages, more than anywhere else in the UK, followed by Devon on 4,051, North Yorkshire on 3,433 and Cumbria on 3,369. Norfolk rounds out the top five by volume on 2,228.
But look at the rates. Cornwall accepts dogs in just 64.6% of its lets, North Yorkshire 64.4%, Cumbria 63.5%, all below the national average. Devon scrapes over the line at 66.4%. So the counties with the most dog-friendly cottages are, on the whole, no more welcoming than average. They simply have so many cottages that even a middling percentage produces a huge number. The map of welcome and the map of choice are not the same map. If you want the best odds of finding a yes, head for the quieter rural counties up the rate table. If you want the widest pick of properties, the West Country and the Lakes still deliver, you just have to filter harder.
A hot tub for you, a sofa for the dog
There is a stubborn assumption that a luxury break means leaving the dog at home. The data says otherwise. Of the 12,218 UK cottages with a hot tub, 8,443 also welcome dogs. That is 69.1%, so nearly seven in ten hot-tub lets will take your dog as readily as they will take your prosecco. Devon leads the dog-plus-hot-tub segment outright with 803 such cottages, with Cornwall close behind on 774, then Cumbria (559) and North Yorkshire (528). You do not have to choose between the soak and the spaniel.
The single most dog-friendly town in Britain
Zoom all the way in and one town wins on welcome. Wooler, a small market town in the Northumberland hills below the Cheviots, takes dogs in 49 of its 54 cottages: a rate of 90.7%, the highest of any town with at least 50 lets. After Wooler comes Burnham Market in Norfolk on 88% (44 of 50), then a dead heat at 85.6% between Staithes on the North Yorkshire coast and Rhosneigr on Anglesey, both on 83 dog-friendly cottages out of 97. There is a pattern here, and it is not the obvious seaside-resort one: the warmest welcomes cluster in walking country and on quieter stretches of coast, the places people actually take dogs.
The bottom of the table, fairly
Someone has to come last, and in our table it is Merseyside, where only 33.8% of cottages (49 of 145) accept dogs. It is worth being fair about why. Merseyside is a small, largely urban let market, and city-flat owners are simply less likely to allow pets than a farmhouse owner with a boot room and a paddock. This is not an anti-dog conspiracy, it is a thinner, more urban stock. The same caveat applies up the bottom of the table to Tyne and Wear (52.3%), Cheshire (52.9%) and Worcestershire (53.1%).
The genuine surprise at the lower end is a holiday name. The Isle of Wight welcomes dogs in only 55.9% of its 816 cottages, and honeypot Dorset, for all its coastal-path glory, sits at just 58.2% across 2,634 lets, well below the national two in three. If you are taking a dog to Dorset or the Island, book early and filter hard, because the welcome is patchier than the brochures suggest.
The full league table: dog-friendly cottages by county, ranked
Every one of the 61 UK counties with at least 100 holiday cottages, ranked by the share that welcome dogs. Search by county, filter by nation, or sort by rate. Each county links to its cottages on selfcatering.co.uk. Counties on fewer than 200 lets are flagged as a smaller sample.
| Rank | County | Nation | Dog-friendly | Total lets | % welcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Angus small sample | Scotland | 136 | 171 | 79.5% |
| 2 | Ceredigion | Wales | 762 | 989 | 77.0% |
| 3 | Northumberland | England | 1,906 | 2,557 | 74.5% |
| 4 | County Durham | England | 450 | 609 | 73.9% |
| 5 | Fife | Scotland | 195 | 264 | 73.9% |
| 6 | Norfolk | England | 2,228 | 3,042 | 73.2% |
| 7 | Carmarthenshire | Wales | 388 | 533 | 72.8% |
| 8 | Lincolnshire | England | 786 | 1,083 | 72.6% |
| 9 | The Scottish Borders | Scotland | 190 | 262 | 72.5% |
| 10 | Dumfries and Galloway | Scotland | 558 | 771 | 72.4% |
| 11 | Suffolk | England | 798 | 1,106 | 72.2% |
| 12 | Gwynedd | Wales | 1,750 | 2,456 | 71.3% |
| 13 | Vale of Glamorgan small sample | Wales | 73 | 103 | 70.9% |
| 14 | Herefordshire | England | 389 | 552 | 70.5% |
| 15 | Argyll and Bute | Scotland | 371 | 528 | 70.3% |
| 16 | Aberdeenshire | Scotland | 205 | 292 | 70.2% |
| 17 | Wiltshire | England | 236 | 338 | 69.8% |
| 18 | Powys | Wales | 797 | 1,148 | 69.4% |
| 19 | Anglesey | Wales | 927 | 1,341 | 69.1% |
| 20 | South Ayrshire small sample | Scotland | 94 | 136 | 69.1% |
| 21 | East Riding of Yorkshire | England | 688 | 1,001 | 68.7% |
| 22 | Pembrokeshire | Wales | 1,268 | 1,882 | 67.4% |
| 23 | Perth and Kinross | Scotland | 336 | 499 | 67.3% |
| 24 | City and County of Swansea small sample | Wales | 100 | 150 | 66.7% |
| 25 | Denbighshire | Wales | 306 | 460 | 66.5% |
| 26 | Devon | England | 4,051 | 6,099 | 66.4% |
| 27 | West Yorkshire | England | 327 | 493 | 66.3% |
| 28 | Moray | Scotland | 147 | 222 | 66.2% |
| 29 | Somerset | England | 909 | 1,378 | 66.0% |
| 30 | Stirling small sample | Scotland | 89 | 135 | 65.9% |
| 31 | Gloucestershire | England | 749 | 1,141 | 65.6% |
| 32 | Staffordshire | England | 286 | 438 | 65.3% |
| 33 | North Ayrshire | Scotland | 139 | 214 | 65.0% |
| 34 | Cornwall | England | 4,302 | 6,657 | 64.6% |
| 35 | Monmouthshire | Wales | 137 | 212 | 64.6% |
| 36 | Nottinghamshire small sample | England | 104 | 161 | 64.6% |
| 37 | North Yorkshire | England | 3,433 | 5,333 | 64.4% |
| 38 | Eilean Siar small sample | Scotland | 92 | 144 | 63.9% |
| 39 | Shropshire | England | 607 | 952 | 63.8% |
| 40 | Cumbria | England | 3,369 | 5,302 | 63.5% |
| 41 | Cambridgeshire small sample | England | 64 | 101 | 63.4% |
| 42 | Derbyshire | England | 1,044 | 1,652 | 63.2% |
| 43 | Lancashire | England | 516 | 819 | 63.0% |
| 44 | Highland | Scotland | 967 | 1,555 | 62.2% |
| 45 | Hampshire | England | 447 | 719 | 62.2% |
| 46 | Northamptonshire small sample | England | 90 | 146 | 61.6% |
| 47 | Essex | England | 190 | 309 | 61.5% |
| 48 | East Sussex | England | 342 | 561 | 61.0% |
| 49 | Leicestershire small sample | England | 86 | 141 | 61.0% |
| 50 | Kent | England | 462 | 762 | 60.6% |
| 51 | Oxfordshire | England | 236 | 391 | 60.4% |
| 52 | Warwickshire | England | 147 | 246 | 59.8% |
| 53 | West Sussex | England | 193 | 329 | 58.7% |
| 54 | Conwy | Wales | 577 | 989 | 58.3% |
| 55 | Dorset | England | 1,534 | 2,634 | 58.2% |
| 56 | Flintshire small sample | Wales | 78 | 138 | 56.5% |
| 57 | Isle of Wight | England | 456 | 816 | 55.9% |
| 58 | Worcestershire | England | 270 | 508 | 53.1% |
| 59 | Cheshire | England | 147 | 278 | 52.9% |
| 60 | Tyne and Wear small sample | England | 68 | 130 | 52.3% |
| 61 | Merseyside small sample | England | 49 | 145 | 33.8% |
How we did it
We took every published holiday cottage listed on selfcatering.co.uk across the UK, 65,813 in all, and counted how many accept at least one dog. A cottage counts as dog-friendly if its listing allows pets. We then grouped the cottages by county and by nation, and worked out the share that welcome dogs in each. To keep the ranking honest, a county had to have at least 100 lets before it could appear in the league table, which is why 61 of the UK's 111 counties are ranked and the rest are not. Town figures use a lower floor of 50 lets. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place, and we show the underlying counts beside every rate so you can check the maths. The hot-tub figures count cottages flagged with a hot tub in their listing. Scope is the UK only: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland is not part of the UK and is not included in any figure here. All counts are based on our listings and are correct as of June 2026.
Find a dog-friendly cottage
The map is the fun bit, but the booking is the point. Browse dog-friendly cottages in Ceredigion, walk the Cheviots from Wooler, take your pick across Norfolk or chase the widest choice of all in Cornwall and Devon. Or open the interactive map above, or jump back to the searchable league table of all 61 counties.
FAQ
What percentage of UK holiday cottages are dog-friendly?
Two in three. Across the UK, 43,442 of 65,813 published holiday cottages welcome dogs, a national rate of 66.0%. That leaves roughly a third of all lets that do not accept dogs, despite UK Pet Food putting the dog population at 15.5 million.
Which UK county has the most dog-friendly cottages?
By proportion, Ceredigion in Wales is the standout, with 77.0% of its 989 cottages welcoming dogs, the highest of any county with a large sample. Angus in Scotland posts a higher 79.5% but on just 171 lets, so it is a small-sample result rather than a reliable national winner. By sheer numbers, Cornwall leads with 4,302 dog-friendly cottages, followed by Devon (4,051) and North Yorkshire (3,433).
Which UK nation is the most dog-friendly for cottage holidays?
Wales, where 68.8% of holiday cottages welcome dogs, ahead of Scotland (67.4%) and England (65.3%). Northern Ireland is the lowest at 56.6%, though it has the smallest sample of the four nations.
Which counties are the least dog-friendly for cottage holidays?
Among counties with at least 100 lets, Merseyside is lowest at 33.8% (just 49 of 145 cottages), followed by Tyne and Wear (52.3%), Cheshire (52.9%), Worcestershire (53.1%) and the Isle of Wight (55.9%). Popular Dorset also underperforms at 58.2%, below the 66.0% national average.
What is the most dog-friendly town in the UK for cottage stays?
Wooler in Northumberland, where 49 of 54 cottages (90.7%) welcome dogs, the highest of any town with at least 50 lets. It is followed by Burnham Market in Norfolk (88%), then Staithes in North Yorkshire and Rhosneigr on Anglesey (both 85.6%).
Can I find a dog-friendly cottage with a hot tub?
Easily. 8,443 UK cottages both welcome dogs and have a hot tub, which is 69.1% of all 12,218 hot-tub cottages, so nearly seven in ten hot-tub lets accept dogs. Devon (803) and Cornwall (774) have the most dog-friendly hot-tub cottages.
Do the counties with the most dog-friendly cottages also have the highest welcome rate?
No. The biggest staycation counties have huge numbers of dog-friendly cottages but middling acceptance rates: Cornwall (64.6%), North Yorkshire (64.4%) and Cumbria (63.5%) all sit below the 66.0% national average, while smaller rural counties such as Ceredigion (77.0%) and Northumberland (74.5%) top the table on rate.
How many UK counties were ranked, and why not all of them?
61 of the UK's 111 counties had enough holiday cottages (a minimum of 100 lets) to be ranked reliably. The other 50 were excluded because their samples were too small for a stable percentage, which is why some headline-grabbing rates from tiny counties are flagged or left unranked.
Research and map by selfcatering.co.uk. Free to use with a link back. Cottage counts based on our listings, correct as of June 2026.