River Witham

The River Witham is the main waterway of the Lincolnshire fens, navigable from Lincoln down to the Grand Sluice at Boston, a run of some thirty miles across dead-flat drained land. It is a river navigation with only a handful of locks — at Lincoln, at Bardney, and the Grand Sluice at the Boston end — and long, straight, embanked reaches between them. At Lincoln it meets the Fossdyke Navigation, the Roman canal to the Trent, so the two together form an old cross-country route from the Trent to the sea.

The straightness is deliberate. Before the 18th century the Witham wandered and silted, and navigation between Lincoln and Boston had all but failed. The Grand Sluice at Boston, built in the 1760s, cut off the tide and let the river be confined between the high banks it keeps today, draining tens of thousands of acres of fen for farmland in the process. The sluice still divides the fresh river from the tidal Haven below.

For a walker or cyclist this is easy, open going, and the towpath carries the Water Rail Way, a surfaced path running the full length from Lincoln to Boston. It is flat, quiet and exposed, with wide fen skies, wildfowl on the water, and Lincoln Cathedral or Boston Stump visible for miles at either end.

Both ends are on the rail network — Lincoln and Boston each have stations — so the navigation is simple to walk or ride in a single day or in sections. It is managed by the Canal & River Trust.