Lincolnshire Free Press and Spalding Guardian reporter Kris Johnston discusses 'forbidding' Steppingstone Bridge in Spalding
Unsafe? Dodgy? Forbidding? According to concerned parties, Steppingstone Bridge in Spalding is all of the above.
They’re not far off the mark. After speaking to district councillor Roger Gambba-Jones about a lack of improvement at the somewhat imposing structure, I took an 11pm trip to see it under the cover of darkness.
It wasn’t a particularly enjoyable trip. Luckily I didn’t catch any of the ‘druggy’ behaviour that our reader Kerry Craig cited on one of our Facebook posts.
However, the lighting at the bridge is appalling. The closer you get to Sainsbury’s the better it gets, but climbing the stairs from the Park Road side is a trickier task than it should be.
Bottles, cans and empty cigarette packets are scattered underneath the walkway. The menu of a Steppingstone regular?
Replying to one of our stories about the bridge last month, Sharon Marie said: “That bridge has been a dodgy area since I was a child”.
Hayley White claimed people ‘just sit there drinking’, and Natasha Chapman was frustrated by people’s apparent inability to locate a bin for their rubbish.
We can preach all we like about keeping people safe at night, but the lack of progress with problems like this are a damning indictment of how we talk about change rather than actually taking improvement action.
After a Friday night out in Spalding, why would someone walking home choose to cross the bridge? Why risk coming across an unpleasant crowd?
My girlfriend has told me she doesn’t want to stroll in that direction the next time she visits.
She’d rather take a long way around - just like plenty of others.
It’s dark, it’s eerie, it can be downright terrifying.
Obviously, the politics involved in taking proper action are frustrating. They shouldn’t be, but they are.
Like plenty of our readers have pointed out, Network Rail and the county and district councils have to put their pride aside to get something done.
Until they do, Steppingstone Bridge will remain a forbidding location at night.
