Before telling this tale, perhaps a little bit of memory refreshing is required. July 2007 as most of you will recall, was the wettest July on record. Henley Royal Regatta, was within 2 hours of being cancelled, because of the extreme flow conditions, and as a result, only the bare minimum of the course and booms were laid, and by the end of the month quite a few of them had broken free and were wedged up against Hambledon Weir down stream of the course. Those of us who attended the excellent crew picnic in the enclosure car park on the Thursday night will remember it well, the rain was coming in one end of the large gazebo horizontally and blowing straight out at the other end taking plates and empty glasses with it! The third week of July saw most of Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Bewdley and the Severn towns under water, as were Oxford, Abingdon, Reading and Henley later on. Because of this, there was virtually no rowing anywhere in the country after Henley apart from Dorney Lake and surprisingly the Avon at Monkton, Bradford and Saltford, which for some reason missed most of the rain.
The week after Henley in the middle of the latest torrential downpour, the latest Monkton adventure started as it always does with a phone call from Gordon Reay, that went something like this:
GR: Ah Mike how would you like to be boatman for England?
MS: (somewhat taken aback and flattered) Well Gordon that's fine, but you better tell me more.
GR: Well I can't tell you anything just yet because I don't know anything, and nobody has told me anything, but basically the English squad are wanting a coach and boatman to take crews and boats to Cork, for the Home Countries International Regatta, at Inniscarra Lake over the weekend of the 28th of July.
MS: ok then Gordon, when they tell you something, give me a ring and let me know the plan, if any.
Well, that was the first of 26 phone calls and several plans! First we were taking the Monkton trailer from Longmead, after it had been loaded by the individual crews, on their way to Ireland.
Then we were loading it up in Putney. Then we were loading it at Dorney Lake. Then we weren't loading it at all. Then we weren't taking it at all, but flying to Ireland from Heathrow.
The decision was finally taken to get all the participating crews to Dorney to train and boat-load in the week prior to the regatta, which was after the weekend of the National Championships at Nottingham, where most of the crews had been selected. After their final outings they would load up two trailers for Ireland one of which Gordon and I would be towing.
Thursday 26th of July, saw no let up in the weather, or the mood of the new England coach and boatman, when informed that the only ferry available was the 3.30am Fishguard to Rosslare on Friday morning. We duly met up at Longmead, on Thursday evening, picked the trailer up that Gordon had brought down from Dorney the day before, and off we went!
Monkton to Fishguard is a long way, when your maximum speed, with a loaded boat trailer is about 60 miles per hour, and if you are ever thinking of buying a 1990 Mitsubishi Pajero, then don't!
It only has a 9-gallon fuel tank, with a 3 litre engine that will do about 20 miles to the gallon, towing a heavy trailer, so several stops for fuel were required. At one of them on the Welsh side of the Severn Bridge the trailer nearly got blown over by the gale force wind coming up from the Irish Sea. It was going to be a rough old night. And so it turned out to be, having installed ourselves in a nice cosy cabin in the relative calm of Fishguard harbour, at 2.30am we retired to bed to face the morning drive. Needless to say it was still raining cats and dogs.
My previous life with British Airways, involved quite a lot of lying in a bunk, being thrown about by turbulence, so when we hit the Irish Sea, I drifted off to a gentle rocking until we got to Rosslare, where I was greeted by a frail voice from the top bunk -
Are you all right there Mike?
Fine thanks Gordon, I replied. To which he retorts ***** I thought we were all going to die!
So much for his confidence in Stena Line ships and seamanship. So now he won't go on aeroplanes or ferries.
We were first off the ferry, and for the first time the sun was out as we set off for Cork, which I thought in my ignorance of Ireland was about an hour away, it turned out to be over 3. So we arrived at Inniscarra Lake at about 10.30am, a total journey time of 14 hours, we were knackered to put it mildly, so off we went into Cork city for a Guinness and an afternoon kip.
Late afternoon saw us back at the lake, to put the boats together, for the crews to have an evening paddle, and I was about to have a touch of dj vu with several other regattas, where Monkton crews are involved. The women's VIII had turned up with a set of blades for a 4 and 2 pairs, each set from a different manufacturer, so after a lot of mucking about we at least managed to get them geared the same so that it was possible for them to get a row. The Welsh junior women's pair had turned up with a brand new GB squad boat, having rigged it and gone down on the stage where they found that their sweep blades would not fit into the 2 sculling riggers that they had fitted, the 2 sweep riggers having been left at Dorney Lake. We therefore had to borrow a boat, from our long suffering Irish hosts and totally re-rig it for them. They rewarded us by winning their event so all our efforts were not in vain.
Monkton duck tape and Araldite were much in evidence in several other running repairs, as we seemed to be the only people who had brought any spares or tools. At 8pm that night we were back in the city, for several more Guinnesses a meal, and off to bed for a well-earned 8 hours sleep.
We had a reasonably early start on Saturday morning, Gordon having volunteered to take the senior lightweights to the lake at 7.15am so that they could have a row in order to get down to their respective, maximum weights (57kg for the women and 70kg for the men) prior to the crew weigh in at 9.20am! Why do they do it? I meanwhile had a little lie in for the next 25 minutes and then started my early morning ablutions which I have to admit didn't take too long as a full Irish breakfast was promised to see me through the day. I thought something was a little amiss as I opened the bedroom door and found myself squelching around in two inches of water on the brand new carpet (This was after I had observed the loo to be flushing for an inordinately long time) I managed to put two and two together and went down to the lobby to inform the hotel, only to met by several occupants of the third floor below us who were all queueing up tell the poor receptionist from Lithuania that their rooms were being flooded and to do something rather soon or the entire Hotel would be suffering the same fate! Saturday morning at 7.35 is not the best time in Cork to try and find a plumber, but to give her the praise she deserves she managed it and I sloped off for a bit of bacon and black pudding. 8.15 saw me back on the 4th floor to be met by a team of Polish plumbers ripping our room apart, I hastily picked up my waterproofs and wellies and left as rapidly as I could to make my way to the team bus and the regatta.
The driver informed us with a sly smile that there may be a little rain by the afternoon; what an Irish understatement! At the lake after a few more Monkton type repairs and several cups of coffee, the proceedings got under way at around 11am. The course is a standard 6 lane 2000 metres on a natural lake, in wonderful surroundings, mainly rolling green hills. Well by 11.15 the hills had completely disappeared, in what the commentator referred to as Irish mist; in fact it was chucking it down. When he later referred to a light drizzle, it was coming down in stair-rods! His commentaries were one of the enduring memories of the whole event; he referred to distances being disputed by the paint on a bow ball, a head an elbow or a hand, in fact he could have been reporting on a horse race, except for the fact that he kept telling his boat driver to slow down there Liam or speed it up a bit there Liam we are losing them. Henley could certainly do with someone like him to lighten up their dry and dull commentaries.
The rain continued all day, and as boats came off the water, they seemed to appear on our trailer 10 minutes later, we came out with 6 boats but by the end of the event we had 17, and they weren't any old rubbish either, being mainly Empachers, Fillipis and Stamflis. The entire value of them was well over 100,000, so it was with some trepidation that we set off back to Rosslare in glorious sunshine the following afternoon with our valuable load and a large hangover, having had yet another evening on the Guinness at the regatta banquet, along with 400 odd competitors, coaches and officials. 14 hours later, in the rain again saw us back at Longmead at 4am, when Gordon decided to beat the traffic, by carrying on up to Dorney, so that the crews could get their boats back to their clubs that evening. He got to bed at 8am, I was safely tucked up by 5am having helped myself to a large Jameson's Irish Whiskey with just the slightest splash of water. I'd seen enough of it over the last 36 hours!
So ended a wonderful weekend, full of Irish eccentricities but beautifully organised in a way only the Irish could. I think all the teams were grateful to Monkton for helping them out and getting everything there on time, and to Gordon for looking after two of the women's crews. Just for the record the Irish won both the men's and women's junior events and the English won both the senior events, and everybody had a ball. Don't tell Gordon but long live the Irish !!