Last weekend a squad of rowers from Inverness travelled to London to take part in the Vesta Rowing Club Veterans Head of the River Race on the Thames.

Our trip was extremely successful from a social aspect, meeting up with old friends from Scottish, British and International crews as well as convincing an entire pub to cheer for Scotland in their Rugby match against the Irish on Saturday afternoon (to no avail, sadly).

For our event on Sunday, our host club was the "Sons of the Thames" at Hammersmith. The provided us with a very nice stampfli 8+ and a set of croker oars. We were the first 8 to boat from their jetty, and we enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere of so many crews on the water together, even joining in the singing of a medley of Queen tunes with the London RC crew who were as mad as a box of frogs, but also a fine crew, winning our division.

The highlight of the race itself for our crew was the stiff competition from crew 97 (Minerva RC from bath). Starting two crews back, they finally caught up with us at Hammersmith Bridge (where the majority of event photographs are taken) and took a long time to pass us as we all individually were spurred into maximum effort to try and hold them off.

Our results are recorded for posterity below, and as previously intimated it is hope that this effort becomes a foundation for a regular assault on this well organised and enjoyable event.

I would particularly like to thank Hazel Smith for negotiating with the Sons of the Thames, and Dave Rothwell for organising the logistics.

Crew List and Results

1. Sophie Warburton
2. Hazel Geddes
3. Dave Rothwell
4. Robert Gordon
5. Ken Sinclair
6. Neil Wallace
7. Hazel Smith
8. Katie Van Exan

• Mathew Burnett of Aberdeen Boat Club. (cox)

The crew had a starting position of 95 out of 219 crews, racing as a mixed veteran C crew. We finished 170th overall... meaning we were faster than 49 crews!!!!!!
Our course time was 22:45.76 (22:12.76 after handicap adjustment). In our category we were 10th out of 12 crews.