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 ...