Short dog walk to the Ribble Way back and forth from The Dolphin Inn at Longton.

A walk with the Dogs on the Ribble Estuary

Seeing as it was such a lovely day in the North West, we decided to take the dogs out to a new place for them. We normally take them around the fishing ponds at Scarisbrick, or around Bank Hall near Tarleton. Today though we travelled a little further to Longton, specifically the Dolphin Inn, a pub we have visited a few times for some delicious meals. 

So a quick half hour drive up the A59, and down the narrow country lanes our towards the marshes of the River Douglas, where it meets the River Ribble. We park outside the pub, get the dogs on the leads, and set off up the road to the gated entrance to the footpath on top of the flood barrier.  We instantly realise we may have a bit of a problem when we reach the first stile, our dogs are big, Dexter is an old Chocolate Labrador, and is on the chunky side, whereas Lomax is a 9.5st Dogue de Bordeaux (Turner and Hooch), and is a big lad. Somebody has been paying attention to the stiles, and chicken wire around it, so there is no easy way through for the dogs, fortunately they can both squeeze under the Stile, just.

Once we reach the top of the flood barrier, 2 things surprise me, first of all we are looking out on a massive space, huge in fact, I wasn't expecting it to be so vast. The second thing I realise is we are completely alone on this side of the river, a couple of bird watchers on the opposite side are the only people we can see. So we take the leads off and the dogs go mental for 5 minutes in their new found freedom. 

Now when I was looking at this walk on Ordinance Survey, I had planned to turn right and head towards Preston, following the Ribble, but there was no way, without picking them up, over the stile for the dogs, so we turned left instead and followed the top of the Flood Barrier.

It was a lovely morning for a walk, the sun was warm, but the wind carried a bit of a chill, by no means uncomfortable though. The dogs walk ahead, keeping to the top of the bank, stopping every 2 yards to sniff the ground, or to look out at the marshes, in particularly the sheep that are grazing on the boggy land close to the waters edge, but constant shouts from the wife, let the dogs know they are not to go down the bank, and they obey, as they always do, and continues sniffing around the top of the bank.

When we reached the end of the high flood barrier path, another stile takes us on to a much wetter path, its muddy and boggy and takes us between 2 fences for about 300 meters where it just stops. 2 fences and a stile in to a field that has sheep in. With no path visible and not wanting to take the dogs in with the sheep, we decided to walk back they way we came, so turned round and headed back up the boggy path. Instead of following the same path, we take a short cut back to the pub, through a proper gate, which in felt tip has written over it to keep dogs on a lead, and to pick up any dog mess, its obvious the path runs next to somebodies back garden, and it looks like they are moving closer onto the path. Our dogs are already on the leads, and Im already carrying 2 bags of mess when we pass a lady in the garden watching us as we pass by. Through a second gate and we are back at the car, and we make our way into the pub garden and let the dogs have a drink at the outside tap, before taking it in turns to go in and wash our hands and order a brew and a bacon sandwich each.

As I said, it was a short walk, just over 2 miles, Lomax doesn't do distance, and Dexter is getting on now, so we don't push them too far these days. 

Definitely an eye opener to the Ribble Way footpath, as I could get the train to Preston and follow the path back to Tarleton before jumping on a bus home.