Dog Walkers in Gijón, Spain

Gijón has a relationship with dogs you notice in the street before you find it in any statistic. It is a mid-sized, intensely walkable city with a continuous sea frontage and a fabric of neighbourhoods where people know each other, and all of that keeps the animal part of the everyday scenery in a way larger cities have lost.

The Atlantic climate is the great ally. Summers are cool — passing thirty degrees makes the news — and winters mild, so neither the south's July paralysis nor the meseta's frosts exist here. What does exist is the orbayu, that fine, persistent rain that never forces a cancellation but soaks you slowly and demands a drying routine. And there are the galernas, abrupt shifts of wind and temperature that can wreck an afternoon on the seafront wall in a matter of minutes.

The geography is kind. The city is essentially flat between San Lorenzo and El Llano, with the Santa Catalina headland above Cimadevilla as the centre's only serious climb, and the river Piles drawing a green corridor inland. The Cervigón path, hung over the cliffs east of the beach, is probably the walk with the best effort-to-reward ratio on the whole Asturian coast.

Towards the south, Somió keeps an almost rural character, with estates, lanes between stone walls and a great deal of green fifteen minutes from the centre. And Monte Deva, on the outskirts, offers genuine woodland, waymarked trails and a broad enclosure for anyone whose dog needs to cover kilometres without meeting traffic.