'Sexual athletics' on riverside bench shock horrified hotel guests

‘Sexual athletics’ on a riverside bench has been alarming guests at a top-class hotel. The seat, across the River Welland from The Cley Hall Hotel in Spalding, Lincolnshire, has become a love bench for couples drinking and having sex well into the early hours. Sometimes the sessions go on so long they could even be classed as turning love making into ‘an Olympic sport’, according to a local councillor calling for the bench to be moved.



Coun Christine Lawton said: “It’s not just happening for a short time – it’s become like sexual athletics and you could even say they are turning it into an Olympic sport. It’s such a problem for the hotel and it’s giving guests the totally wrong impression of Spalding.” Passions cooled over winter, but the problem – mostly involving ‘the under-30s and Eastern Europeans’, according to hotel co-owner David Stanbridge – hotted up again during the recent warm spell.

He said it was time the couples got a room as he and his business partner, Rob Andrew, were working hard to build the 17-bedroom Grade II listed Georgian hotel into a five-star facility for the town. Mr Stanbridge said: “We took over last July and started renovating the hotel and it’s been a problem since then. We get people staying here from all over the world – from Holland, America and New Zealand – and it isn’t painting a good impression of Spalding or the hotel.



“As well as sex on the bench, there’s often drinking and shouting until 3am, people urinating in the river, and a problem with rubbish. People don’t like walking there – one lady got mugged – and all the dog bins are full of beer cans.” Mr Stanbridge said the police had been very helpful, but even they were getting sick of it now. He said: “The police said ‘call us anytime’, but sometimes it’s happening three times a day.”