Powfoot, Scotland

🐶 - Dogs are allowed on the beach with no restrictions, but do keep an eye on them, particularly when the tide is on its way out. The tide on the estuary moves scarily fast! Dogs are allowed outside at the Powfoot Golf Hotel, but not inside the lobby or restaurant. There are plenty of bins along the road so please make sure you use them and pick up after your dog.

🚗 - There is parking at Powfoot along the road by the estuary, but it's best to head down to the car park just past the hotel, which is generally pretty quiet. If you're using the hotel itself, there is parking on site, but this can get quite busy and should only be used by hotel patrons.

🚽 - There is a public toilet by the car park, but these are not particularly pleasant to use. There are facilities available to hotel patrons at the Powfoot Golf Hotel.

It was lovely to be able to take my parents for an afternoon at Powfoot today. It's somewhere that Mr H and I spend a lot of time with the dogs, and it's one of my favourite places for a lot of reasons:

• It's 15 minutes from the house

• It's an estuary, so it's not quite a "beach" but you still get that seaside smell

• The dogs love it

• It's never mega busy

• Watching the tide whip in is crazy and impressive

• I can see the Lake District fells across the Solway estuary

• I can see Criffle, which I am saving for New Years' Day to walk up!

My dad recently had open heart surgery, and this is the first time since his op that he has been able to get up to my house for a visit, so it was great to be able to take him somewhere nice, and we had such lovely weather for it. It was high tide when we were there, which is my favourite time to go, but it does mean that the feature of the beach - the Victorian tidal pool - was completely submerged. It's no longer safe to use, but is pretty impressive to look at, and is a really lovely and unique part of the history of the village.

The village itself is very quiet, with a golf course and a large golf hotel (the aptly named Powfoot Golf Hotel!), which is where we stopped for coffee and cake. To be perfectly honest, the coffee was... not to my taste - it was super strong, which I generally like, but this was just a little much! The service was friendly though and there was a fabulous cake selection! Food stopped serving at 2:30pm but during the day you can get food inside and outside, and there is the Del Amitri restaurant which opens in an evening. I've not yet tried the Del Amitri, but I am really looking forward to getting there; I have heard from numerous sources that it is excellent.

There are a couple of caravan parks at Powfoot, one of which does have an on site café, but I have tried the café there previously and was not impressed at all. I'm reluctant to go back because of the way Mr H and I were both treated on separate occasions there.