New Developments

It would seem that our quiet corner of Lincolnshire is under threat. 

Two large new marinas are planned for the River Witham. One below Lincoln at Cherry Willingham and one a little upstream of Boston.

Now the Witham doesn’t exactly have many marina facilities so this sounds like a good idea at first glance. But looking further into the proposals highlights the fact that the berths are aimed at narrowboat owners. And the problem with this? Well the simple fact that there are not enough local visitor mooring spaces to accept the proposed 300 extra narrowboats.

Being a river navigation the Witham has limited visitor mooring space on floating pontoons. There is little if any chance for casual bank side mooring as on canals. In the summer months it can already be a pain finding a mooring due to visiting narrowboats. Get three average length narrowboats on most of the moorings and they are full.

The other issue, more so with the Boston marina is location. Boston is a sea port. Surely they don’t expect narrowboats to head out to sea. In which case where do they expect them to go? The lower section of the Witham is not the most interesting section of waterway even for us and we can travel a damn sight quicker than a narrowboat to ease the burden. Until the Fens Waterways Link is completed, which wont be anytime soon, there will be few cruising options for these boats. What is the point?

Now don’t get me wrong I don’t want to sound like  NIMBY. I am all for development, anything to help the local economy. But it needs to be thought out and reasonable. As far as I can see from the information currently available, neither of these marinas has been thought through, yet both now have planning permission in the bag. Only time will tell I suppose how successful they will or wont be.