Ansdell put-in (Fylde)

The Ribble Estuary opens out from this shore to around ten miles across towards Southport on the far bank, and the River Ribble itself runs some 75 miles inland to its source near Selside in Ribblesdale. From the water, landmarks include the White Church at Ansdell behind the slipway and, on a clear day, Southport and the hills of North Wales across the bay.

The surrounding estuary is the Ribble Estuary National Nature Reserve, a Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1966 and also a Special Protection Area and Ramsar site. Its saltmarsh and mudflats support over 250,000 wintering ducks, geese, swans and wading birds and are internationally important for 16 species, including the pink-footed geese that migrate from Greenland and Iceland each autumn. Land access across the reserve is restricted to public rights of way.

Landward of the slipway is Fairhaven Lake, a man-made saltwater marine lake formed by enclosing a natural tidal lagoon behind a shingle bank once known locally as a stannah, the origin of this stretch's older name, Stanner Bank, still used today as Granny's Bay. First conceived in the early 1890s as the centrepiece of the Fairhaven resort, the lake is considered the third-oldest marine lake in Britain, and remains a separate, council-managed body of water from the tidal estuary foreshore the slipway opens onto.