The training holiday began in a typical style with the long journey from Monkton to Portsmouth being made even longer because amidst all the preparations for leaving, some of the boats' seats had been left at school, sitting patiently on the Quad waiting to be loaded onto a trailer which had by then already been to Salisbury and back again. However, this was really the only slip up in Mr Bewick's otherwise immaculate plans and by the end of the holiday, he had regained everyone's confidence in his organisation.

On our arrival in France, having slept or rather spent an eventful night on the decks of the ferry, and almost everywhere except for the chairs provided and reserved for us, we disembarked for a brief game of football before going through customs and leaving a somewhat confused customs official wondering if he was actually meant to have let those mysterious objects on the trailer, known to me or you as sections of boats pass through into the country.

Once on the road, the party drove in convoy to Nantes stopping firstly to collect one crew member who had managed to be in France before the rest of us, tasting the foods and wines and finding out exactly what they did to one's digestive system, and then to have lunch so that the rest of the party could find out too.

When we eventually arrived at Nantes without having too many navigational problems, we were rather shocked to see that the River Erdre made our own river look like a ditch, but after having met our French counterparts, having had a boat club meal of a sort that Monktonians had never before experienced and probably will never experience again, and having saluted en masse to the river boats passing by, we were set to row the next morning, give or take the odd eighteen late risers.

The rowing side of things - that was officially the reason that we had come - was a great success. With miles of river to row on and more than adequate training partners in the form of Brasenose College Oxford, the First VIII prepared themselves to take on the French, whilst the Colts VIII did their best to keep up. The training consisted of various outings including a long row to a small town called Suce, about ten kilometres upstream of Nantes, and back. Mr Bewick and Mr Mawer even arranged the weather and we were blessed with glorious sunshine, which resulted in many cases of less than glorious sunburn.

However, the day was a great success and lunch was very pleasant, and the chickens were so fresh from the market that two of them had mysteriously disappeared by lunch time. In fact the nourishment throughout the trip was very good despite occasional side effects, and a restaraunt called Flunch was especially popular, serving food which was accordingly filling after the usual picnic lunch of baguettes and pate. After supper came the daily visit to the fair and taste of Nantes' night life which somehow or other included forming good relations with the local Gendarmes.

In fact all the good living was highly beneficial and paid off when the First VIII raced Brasenose and the Nantes University First and Second VIII's. In the longer race of a thousand metres, the First VIII won convincingly in a highly competitive race, and in the shorter race of about five hundred metres, the French rose to the challenge, just beating us by half a canvas with the help of what some members of the First VIII referred to as "a very interesting bend". Brasenose never really featured, and the uninformed spectator would have been excused for thinking that Nantes University Second VIII were rowing in their own separate race.

The results were a great credit to the First VIII, and in the celebrations in the evening at the boat club, the French seemed noticeably subdued, so that our ears were spared from their crude songs we had already heard, and which had such vivid actions to go with them that it didn't take a GCSE in French to understand clearly what they meant. However, the French were very welcoming hosts and we found the trip both profitable to our rowing and enjoyable to such an extent that when we left for England again on the ferry, various members of the party found it very hard to leave France, and particularly our teenaged counterparts alone.

Everyone who came on the Nantes trip in 1991 really enjoyed the experience of rowing in France and the change of scene and would recommend very strongly to all Bluefriars to whom the opportunity is given to come on a similar trip, to make the most of it and take up the offer.