Monkton crews have been abroad six times since 1968. (Copenhagen, Ireland (twice), Germany (three times)). All these trips have been in the Summer, and have been for the 1st VIII only. In the same period of time, the 1st VIII has trained during the Easter holidays in Cambridge every year (except one, when there was a 1st IV rather than a 1st VIII).
At Christmas time this year, the coaches mentioned the possibility of a foreign trip for more than one crew in the Easter holidays. Although Cambridge training is excellent and popular, the 1st VIII coach looked for a change, after spending some 60 nights sleeping on the Caius boathouse floor over the years! Arrangements were made by telephone.
This process took some weeks, as our contacts across the Channel proved very difficult to get hold of. Things were complicated by the P&O ferry strike, but in the end all was well. We sailed from Portsmouth on Saturday night, 9th April, and spent the whole of the next day travelling to Macon, which is a French national rowing centre.
There was no outing, but the sight of the river Saone at Macon was enough to whet apetites. It is wide enough for 10 (?) lane racing, and the stretch of river in the town is a good 2000 metre straight which has been used for World Championships and Olympic regattas. Although wider than the Thames, and suffering from flooding, the surface conditions were good, and it was clearly going to be possible to get some good rowing done. The length of the reach was at least 45 km - more than enough for us!
Both crews went out at 1100 in beautiful weather, and rowed up about 3km to the new road bridge. The water was light, and the outing went by quickly with gentle paddling and leapfrogging. It very quickly became obvious that the 1st VIII would benefit greatly by the presence of another crew. Throughout the week's training, both crews paced each other, and training was more interesting than it would have been solo.
After a good lunch and rest at the hotel, we had a similar outing in the afternoon, except that we ventured further upstream towards the chateau, which was some 6 km from the boathouse. Some firm patches were rowed, and the outing ended with a firm paddle over about 1000m, in which the crews turned out to be well matched.
The afternoon was to be taken off, so the morning outing was long. We went up to the bridge twice, so that two oarsmen could take turns to be on the bank. (We had a spare man with us, so each training outing had a slightly different combination of crew). There was some leap-frogging, along with firm paddles as before. At one stage the crew could not understand why the Colts were keeping up with them, and the more they worried about it, the worse the rowing became! Tustling with other crews is an essential part of training, and we were glad to make some mistakes and learn by them when it did not matter too much (apart from some pride being a little dented).
The morning outing was kept fairly short, as we were to meet two French crews in the afternoon for a 'friendly' race. The weather had turned colder and wet, so we did some racing practice, ending with an 'unfriendly' 800m against the colts. The 1st VIII beat them, displaying more confidence than on the previous day.
The French junior crew turned out to be a well trained group. They go out four evenings a week throughout the year, as well as undergoing regular fitness training. Their crew included at least one international. We had hoped to paddle with them for a while before racing, but they clearly had only the race in mind, and as soon as they got to the 2000m start, they turned and waited for us. We had not got as far as learning how to do starts, so planned to get into the race as well as we could. The crews turned out to be exactly matched. We rowed the 1500m (to the boathouse) at a steady 31/32, with the French going at a higher rate. At no stage were the crews more than a few feet apart. The spare man and French bigwigs followed the race in a van on the tow path, while the coaches followed by launch. On the finish line, JMB reckoned that we were a foot or two up, BSM thought we were a fraction down, an the umpire pronounced a dead-heat. The club gave us a reception after the race, which ended a very happy stay at Macon.
There was a long trip North, to Amiens, our next port of call. The drivers decided to get off the motorway after a while to make the journey more interesting. It was, but it was also much slower, and it became obvious in mid-afternoon (after an excellent lunch near Chablis) that there was not even a remote hope of getting to Amiens for our rendez-vous at 6 p.m. We tried 'phoning several times to say that we would not be there to meet our new hostess. She had kindly said she would meet us at a motorway junction and guide us to the club. (It turned out the next day that she had waited 3 hours for us). We finally grounded for the night at Soissons, where we stayed in a hotel opposite the station.
We completed the trip to Amiens, where we found the boathouse (very small), in the middle of town. The contrast of the river Somme with the Saone could not be more marked. The Somme goes through the town as a dirty and narrow drainage ditch. It was flowing very fast (about 1 m/s), and racing times would clearly beat all records. Our hosts had organised accommodation for us at the local camp site, where a dormitory building had been set aside for us. We had a picnic lunch there before returning for an afternoon outing. This took us up a winding river (reminiscent of the Avon at St. Anne's in • Bristol — though much narrower). Many small fen-like ditches ran into the river, and the whole area was split into small plots on land (Hortillonages) which were cultivated rather like allotments. The local people were obviously very proud of these plots and spent many hours there. We had to be careful going by in the launch, because the land was only three or four inches above the water level.
The usable stretch of water was about 3000m, but leap-frogging and training side by side was difficult. Both crews were drowsy after the long journey, and the first outing was not a great success. Individual faults were more glaring than on the wide river at Macon, and we spent some time correcting them. The outing finished with an attempt at the 2000m course, which was downstream to the boathouse. The stream was running so fast that we managed to do the distance in a fast time (about 5 min 30), treating it as a sprint course.
The morning outing was longer than the previous one, and we ventured up past the course to a narrow and winding stretch, which turned out to be almost useless for training. We included some rowing over short distances, and decided to end the outing with a full row over the course. This was tackled with good spirit, and done in a fast time. The first signs of staleness were showing in both crews during this outing, so it was decided to scrap the planned afternoon outing to ensure that our performance would be as good as possible the next day. It was important that the evening was relaxed after what had been a week's hard training, so everyone was given the evening off to do as they liked. The coaches enjoyed a good dinner with parents who had come to watch us racing, and crews ate at various restaurants, and then saw a bit of the carnival which was going on in the town that evening. All were in bed by about 2215, to get a good night's sleep before the Head of the River race the following day.
The boathouse area and river had been quiet for the two days before the regatta, and there seemed hardly room to cope with the 300 crews that were expected. We found the road next to the boathouse had been closed to traffic so that boat trailers could be parked and unloaded, and the arrangements were excellent. The time-table was more like that for a regatta than for a head race, and the event was spread throughout the day. Crews went down the course at one minute intervals, so there was no over-taking, and each crew had to row it's own course. A large number of oarsmen rowed down the course two or three times in different boats. The colts rowed in one of the morning divisions, and came down looking tidy but rating a bit low (28), compared with others racing at 33 and above. (The coaches saw only the last minute or so, and estimates of rates may be biased because of special efforts being made towards the end of the course). Times published during lunch placed the Colts 20 seconds ahead of their nearest rivals in the Cadet class, which included oarsmen aged up to 3 months older than our colts group. This result gave the 1st VIII good hope for later in the day.
We saw some very young boys and girls rowing in quad sculls. (classes 'Benjamines' and 'Minimes'). Some of these crews rowed beautifully together, and they clearly learnt watermanship at an early age (9, 10, 11?). Our J14 quad would have been very hard pressed in a race with them!
We returned to the camp site for a picnic lunch before preparing to race at 5 p.m. We launched late to avoid the melee of boats which had to go up to the start together after a previous division. From the boathouse, we did a single stroke, and then sat the boat level in relaxed but disciplined fashion for a long time. the commentator pointed out how good the crew looked, and the impression given to the considerable crowd all the way to the start was of a crew which knew how to row, and had the confidence to win their class. We had still not even begun to practise racing starts, so the paddle upstream was used to perfect a start for the day. (Four long strokes, held well in, then legs ten). the first one, captured on video near the finish, certainly looked effective. the race itself went well, at 32. Cover was half chaining or better. The Senior crews looked powerful, and had the advantage of age over our young 1st VIII (5 in the Lower Sixth), and the coaches reckoned that they would leave us behind by a bit. All these senior crews came in at 35+, and some looked powerful. We were delighted to beat them all, with half a second to spare.
We travelled gently to Le Havre before catching the ferry at 1700. Portsmouth by 2230, and MCS by 0200.
Term started!
This turned out to be a thoroughly worthwhile training visit. The time and distance spent on the water made up for at least some of the time lost in the Lent Term, and put us in a position to tackle racing in the summer. The two crews helped each other along in training; the few visits made (to a Cave; Macon and Amiens towns; Taize; Amiens Cathedral; etc.) were all interesting. Food at the Macon hotel was quite good, but we did a bit better at Amiens, where we didn't have to pay for accommodation. Both crews appeared to enjoy almost every minute, and it looks as if we will try to arrange similar trips in future.(t's too early to book firm places for next year, but oarsmen who hope to be in keen crews in 1989 should try to keep the second half of the Easter holidays free of other activities if they would like to take part in a similar trip.