Saturday 24th August 2019 in Boston at Last!
As the number of mooring locations are limited on the River Witham and as it is clear that lots of cruisers are out for the sunny Bank Holiday weekend, we decided to start early so that we would arrive in Boston around lunchtime and hopefully find a free mooring spot.
It certainly was a beautiful day and lovely to be on the move so early.
There are many "drains" that flow into the River Witham. This is the largest and it rejoices in the strange name of "Anton's Gowt", a "gowt" being a local name for a drainage ditch. There is a lock at its entrance and it is "navigable" (according to our guide book) for several miles; we hoped to go down it later. Unfortunately, we were warned that it is little used, shallow, weedy and turning a sixty foot narrow boat at the other end was marginal - so sadly we will give it a miss.
Just after Anton's Gowt, we turned a bend in the river and had our first glimpse of the "Stump". What a splendid sight to herald our approach to Boston!
It looks a bit like it is made of stickle-bricks, as one side is covered in scaffolding as part of a massive restoration scheme.
It turned out that there was plenty of space in the visitors' moorings, on which we could stay for up to five days if we wanted to. Clearly, everyone had gone up river to the moorings beside riverside pubs!
So, off to explore Boston on foot. We have both been here before by car but, as ever, the town looks completely different from the riverside.
Our first stop was St. Botolph's, not least because it has an excellent tearoom. We particularly liked the wonky lampost in the foreground.
The church is huge and has a lovely light interior. In fact, it claims to be the largest Parish Church in the country.
The café is under the Stump tower and, to M's delight, it appeared that one of her favourite composers (and his wife) were buried right under our table - so, we had to move the table to photograph it!
Looking out of the church across the green was a very old timber frame building that leaned alarmingly. On the green are stone markers celebrating a number of local Puritans who sailed to Boston in Massachusetts some ten years after the Mayflower to help found a colony there, named after their home town.
Walking back to MM, we went past the "Grand Sluice", which was built in 1766 to maintain the navigable depth of the River Witham. Below the sluice, the river is tidal.
The lock at the Grand Sluice is only about 45 ft long so that the only way that longer boats can transit the lock is when the level of the tide and the river are the same and both gates can be opened to let boats through.
M is very keen to cross The Wash one day but it does require a pilot, a lot of organisation and planning, it is very dependent on weather and tides and takes about 12 hours' cruising plus a couple of hours on a sandbank in the middle of The Wash waiting for the tide to come back in. We did check, and the next available tidal "window" is after 12th September - so it isn't going to happen this year. R, who has to do all that organisation and planning, breathed a sigh of relief!
Back at MM, we were rewarded by another beautiful sunset.
Today: 15 miles, 0 locks and 3.6 hours.
Trip: 297 miles, 134 locks and 158.3 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment