Places one can anchor for free and places one has to pay to anchor?

Is anchoring here free or paid for?

  • Free

    Votes: 21 95.5%

  • Paid for

    Votes: 1 4.5%
  • Total voters
    22
B

Babylon

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Name a place anywhere around the coastline of the UK (including the larger islands but excluding the coastline of the Republic of Ireland) where one can anchor - and say whether its FREE or whether you would have to PAY (not where payment is voluntary).

Then tick the relevant 'free' or 'pay' box in the poll above.

Please scan through posts before submitting your place/poll-choice to check your anchorage hasn't already been listed.

As there isn't an option to poll more than once, please only name ONE place - eventually a big enough picture will emerge.
 
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Babylon said:
Newton Creek, Isle of Wight - FREE
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The risk here is that I end up sleeping in a bivvy bag on the mud bank.

So what do I tell Mrs d after I tell the lovely old chap in his little dory to get lost :confused: .

..especially if he stands there, 1950's bus conductor machine in hand, offering to explain all the good work they do in the creek :ambivalence:

.
 
...to illuminate using - as you have just noted - an overwhelming degree of anecdotal evidence to contributors on an adjacent thread that we don't like in "Rip-Off Britain" where our ancient rights to navigation are being everywhere threatened.
 
Free for the entirety of anywhere I have been on the east coast. Free in many parts of the Solent, and only paid for once you get to the West Country, perhaps with the exception of the Beaulieu.
 
Hamford Water

I understood that the only places where payment was needed was where ownership of the sea-bed was NOT with the Crown Commissioners; e.g. the Beaulieu River and Falmouth, but I stand to be corrected.
 
dom said:
So what do I tell Mrs d after I tell the lovely old chap in his little dory to get lost :confused: .

..especially if he stands there, 1950's bus conductor machine in hand, offering to explain all the good work they do in the creek :ambivalence:

.
Click to expand...

You tell him to give you an invoice which you'll happily pay but please to leave you in peace.

But I'm with your point: the experience is marred by the entitled begging.
 
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This is a rather pointless exercise. The only places where anchoring requires payment is where the body that is responsible for the waters has the legal right to charge. As already identified the number of places where this applies is very small, but unfortunately covers some of the most popular anchorages such as those mentioned already.

The issue surely is that there are a limited number of "free" anchorages in popular areas that are both good overnight anchorages and close to the shoreside facilities that some people want to use. So paid for anchorages such as marinas, mooring buoys, harbour pontoons etc are the default option for many - and some are very expensive reflecting short supply, cost of provision and demand.
 
In 30 years of cruising throughout the west coast of UK, including England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, some of the English south coast at the western and eastern ends, including Isles of Scilly, quite a bit of the east coast as far as Great Yarmouth, I have never been asked for or paid anchoring fees. My reading suggests that this practice is limited to fairly few anchorages in the more or less central parts of the south coast.
 
BelleSerene said:
Interesting... do you know who owns the sea bed in those harbours and what's the authority for the claim?
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It will be the harbour authority that has the legal right established by statute or it will be written into its bye laws.

All very well explained in the RYA leaflet on the subject in the legal section of the website.

Indeed it answers most of the questions raised by this thread.
 
Newtown Creek on the Isle of Wight involves a £5 "donation" to the National Trust to anchor.
Beaulieu river is £8, I think, and then a 1.5mile trip up the river in a tender to Buckler's Hard.
River Dart, Falmouth and Padstow also have a charge, and probably Salcombe though not sure.
 
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