Days Inn by Wyndham Chesterfield Tibshelf

Days Inn Chesterfield Tibshelf sits inside the motorway services on the M1 at junction 28, which tells you what it is for: a clean, cheap, no-fuss overnight stop when you are driving with a dog and do not want to push on. It also works as a budget base for the Peak District, about half an hour west.

The dog welcome is unusually warm for a budget roadside hotel. Reception staff make a fuss of dogs coming through, and guests bringing a dog to a hotel for the first time repeatedly say it was the staff who put them at ease. Rooms are functional but comfortable, air-conditioned and quiet given the location, and there is walking on the doorstep - the Five Pits Trail is close enough to reach on foot for a proper leg-stretch rather than a car-park circuit.

The trade-off is that every room here accepts dogs, so there is no way to request one that has never had a dog in it. Most guests report no smell at all and say they were pleasantly surprised on that front, but not all: there have been stays where dog hair was left on the bed runner and the room smelled strongly of dog on arrival, and some rooms have no opening window, which makes a stale room hard to air out. Housekeeping between stays is the variable to be aware of.

Two other things worth knowing. Barking from neighbouring rooms carries, so a light sleeper or a reactive dog may have a broken night. And dogs have been seen loose in the corridors and public areas, which is unpleasant if your own dog is nervous or if you are travelling with children who are wary of them. Taken together it is a solid, genuinely dog-welcoming stopover rather than a destination, and it earns a 4.7/5 paw rating.