This photograph was taken on a Wednesday afternoon in late February or early March 1985 on the river Cam in Cambridge. It is Downing College Men’s 1^st VIII going at full tilt, trying to defend their College’s position as “Head of the Lents”. I think it was taken somewhere along what is known as Plough Reach, shortly after the race began. If so, I would take a guess that would have just wound down from an initial 44 strokes to the minute hit a “stride” of about 36 to 38. We don’t look perfect, but it is not bad, allowing for the adrenalin.

Some months ago I posted about my rowing days at Cambridge:

I left it at the point where we – this crew – were getting ready for the “Lent Bumps”. “Bumps” racing is, as far as I am aware, unique to Oxford and Cambridge. I understand it came about not because of nascent Oxbridge genius, but because in both places the river is largely too narrow to allow for multiple lanes racing. The ingenious solution to this problem is to play a kind of game of “tag”, but with boats.

Imagine a line of matchsticks all laid out in a line, one and a half match sticks apart. On the starting signal all the match sticks start to race along to wards a finishing line some way off in the distance, all trying to catch and touch, or “bump”,  the one immediately in front, apart from the one at the top of the queue, who is trying to stay there. You just do the same but with boats. The aim is to catch and make contact with any part of the boat ahead – a “bump”. If you do catch the one in front, the two drop out of the precession, leaving the other boats top carry on and fight their own individual battles. The next day you start again in with catcher higher up the league or procession, in the place of the one who was caught, and vice versa. It is a form of snakes and ladders on water. In bumps racing this is over four days, with the respective crews working their way up or down the procession, with the ultimate aim of being on top of the pile on the final day. The boats are ranked in divisions, with Division 1 being the top division. It may take some years for a college to work its way up to the ultimate top of the pile, the Head of the River.

In the lower divisions where the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th boats and the odd novelty crew row this type of racing can result in mayhem and general chaos as the boats plough into each other, like this:

Sometimes there can be a bit of a “crunching tackle”. Here is a Downing College crew giving a crew from Queens College a bit of a “shove” into the bank:

And here is another Downing crew, leading the way at the top of men’s First Division, whilst Caius is in the process of hunting down Emmanuel behind:

It all gets a bit massy when you get up close and personal with a boat in front, by the way, because you are rowing directly in their “puddles” as we say, and the water gets hellish choppy and the blades lose traction.

As you can now tell. Downing was my college. By the early 1980’s Downing had established itself as a college with a very strong reputation in three disciplines: medicine, law – and rowing. Just a few years before the college had finally achieved the coveted position of Head of the River in the “May” or summer term. In 1984, a physically powerful Downing crew had rowed down Trinity Hall and done the same in the spring or “Lent” term, and three other Downing boats had “won their oars”  – the right to claim a  painted and decorated oar recording names of the cox, the crew and the coach, and which crews they had “bumped” by achieving the feat of making four consecutive “bumps” in each of the four days. I recall that because I had been in one of those boats, the college 2^nd VIII, hunting down the boats ahead and moving remorselessly up the Second Division. The oar I claimed is still in the garage.

Now I was in the college 1^st VIII, or I think we simply referred to ourselves, “Downing 1”. We rowed a gleaming white, ultra modern “Janacek” boat, the “UpHellyAa!” which went very well with the distinctive and rather war like magenta coloured oars. Our task was to defend the position as Head of the Lents won the year before; to remain uncaught by Emmanuelle College, who started immediately behind us as second in the division, or anyone who might catch and replace them. This was called “rowing over”. As a “Head” crew you had the advantage of rowing through “clean” water which had not been churned up. You had the disadvantage of having to complete the 2,200 meter course every day for four days at hell for leather speed.

Bumps racing is an odd thing. Whilst it is full of comedy and chaos in the lower divisions, at the serious end there is something almost cruel about it as the boats hunt each other down, or frantically struggle to get away. There is also a real sense of drama about the starts. The start is regulated by a small but very loud cannon which fires, from memory, four minutes before the start, then again one minute before the start, and then as the signal for the start itself.

The nerves really start to kick in with what I recall being the “four minute gun”. By the time of “the one minute gun” the boats are marshaled by the bank of the river at their starting points, lined one and a half boat lengths apart, and ready for the off. Each cox holds a long chain which he can’t let go of until the start of the race. It is attached to a peg on the bank. Just after the one minute gun the boats are pushed away from the bank into the flow of the river, ready for the off, but the cox has to keep hold of that chain. This is a delicate task and requires judgment. What I remember most about that last minute is slow guide as the boat is pushed out into the river, terse instructions of the cox hissing out telling the what to do to get and keep the boat in position – “Touch it bow!” “Touch it two and four!” and the gut wrenching nerves. And the almost complete silence; utter, tense, wet Fenland silence, apart from the monotone from the coach, counting you down.

“Thirty seconds….twenty seconds….ten seconds…five, four, three…”

They usually stopped at about three. And then there is a percussive “BOOM” as the cannon fires, and all hell breaks loose as the boats spring off and the spectators break into baying cries and calls and shrieks like a pursuing pack of hounds.

Here is Downing Women’s 1^st VIII actually doing a bumps start this time last year on day 2 of the races, defending their own hard one Headship of the women’s divisions, and starting from the same spot we did. I have to say, looking mighty impressive:

And here is last year’s Downing men’s Lent crew practicing a start, and I have to say looking strong too:

Actually, I can’t believe I used to do that, but I suppose I must have…

I wrote in my previous piece about the training, the dedication, and a touch about the ethos. A College like Downing was a very close community, very different from a campus university. I have blogged before on the subject of Spartans and their harsh regime upbringing in the “Agoge” schools:

In hindsight, there was more than a whiff of Sparta about Downing, even down to the magenta and black College colours. It was very simple; all that was required and expected to be “socially acceptable” was excellence, academically or sportingly, but preferably both at the same time. It was not necessarily a very “nice” place. It was highly competitive, and in fact, it could be harsh and intolerant, even cruel, and just as the Spartan students underwent a fair degree of rough treatment, it left its marks on me for a lifetime, for both good and ill. But it was a collection of very high achievers with a strong pride in performance and excellence. It was what it was. Brilliant minds were welcome, and there were many. Mere “intellectuals” were not.  Ed Miliband would have hated it.

But back to the rowing. This was quite a fast crew. Let me be clear that I was the weakest of the rowers, so it wasn’t down to me. I was just allowed the privilege of sitting on the end, not getting in the way and just trying to keep the time. In fact, in the picture above my right leg has been thrown out of line slightly, weakening the subsequent drive – so there we go, typical.  Some the guys were to make progress into the University squad and one had had already been there as a member if the lightweight crew. It had some very strong “home grown” boys, and a couple of classy rowers trained at public school too; including one with one of the sharpest and most brilliant minds I have ever met. The stroke – a novice like me when he went up to Downing but who went on to represent the University – had a natural rhythm and was hugely strong. The guy behind him in the “seven” seat was an accomplished lightweight rower at University level. He used to run marathons, as I recall. I know that about a year ago four members of this crew met up back at college, and in their late 40’s gave a crew from the present generation more than a run for their money. That is actually rather impressive.

The thing about this crew was that it had the one quality that makes some team sports special, in that it was greater than then the some of its parts on paper. It just seemed to work. If it wasn’t University “Blue Boat” standard it was because there were one or two weaker links, mainly me, and we were smaller. I would guess the average weight of the boat was around about the twelve stone six pounds, whereas even in those days when crews were lighter than today, you would expect the average weight of the University boat to be over fourteen stone. That is a lot of extra grunt and torque.

Anyway, by the time the Lents arrived we had beaten all comers from the east of England in ferocious weather at the Bedford Head time trial, and cleaned up at the Oxford Regatta. We had put in training sessions on the Thames alongside the elite and ultra professional Thames Tradesmen club, and hours in the gym and on the river.

What I remember most about the boat was it was so stable. Somehow, the various shapes and sizes of the crew complimented each other. A “racing shell” boat is very hard to balance, but this boat was and incredibly balanced platform and that allowed precision and full power with each stroke. There was a remorseless rhythm thanks to our brilliant stroke and seven man: catch, surge, “thud” (as the oars cleared the water in unison), recover, recover, catch, surge, thud…

Did we successfully defend the Headship? Of course we bloody did. Emmanuelle College, who were chasing us were, in our view, no great shakes  I would not normally be so ungracious after all these years, but my beloved friend Dr (as she is now) Firenza Pesta has been telling me lately of the patronizing and arrogant attitude of the men of that college to her. You see she was my contemporary at “Emma” (as it was known), and when the men of her College offered no assistance in her and the crew’s efforts to improve – in fact they were positively unhelpful and nasty – she turned to Downing for help. And that is how we met, and I became friends with a French woman of aristocratic Norman blood. Together with another good Downing lad called John we gave her and her crew a tough time. No “there, there dear, that’s quite good” from us! In our view, anyone in a boat was a gender neutral instrument of maximum ergonomic production – period. When the work was over, fine, but on the river, we rowed to win, the crews we trained we trained to win, and that meant hard work and high standards. Firenza Pesta was and is no wimp, I can most solemnly promise you. She was a nuclear energy ball of energy with more guts and grit than her College’s men’s VIII put together. She became a hell of a good rower, and in that regard I must also mention her now husband, “F”, then a research fellow and scientist of genius brain and himself no mean oars man. And I have learned – all these years later on – that having coaches from the hated and feared “Nova Sparta” that was Downing College really pissed off her patronizing, Chauvinistic male colleagues at Emma. That pleases me greatly.

But again, I digress….there I go, rambling off again.

The Men’s First Division kicks of last on the last day, in the late afternoon and before the East Anglian dusk draws in. It is a grinding, winding course, 2concluding (assuming you get there) with after the seemingly interminable Long Reach, and past the Pike and Eel

As I have mentioned, rather ironically the men’s crew from Emmanuel College were second in the division and chasing us. In the event, they posed no real threat, and we simply rowed away from them and cruised. No one was catching them either so it was a bit dull, but that was fine with us. Pembroke College were really quick, and worthy of immense respect, precise and nimble in their blade work, and with a powerful bear of a man, an ex rugby player called Geoff at the number 5 seat in the middle of the boat giving extra oomph, and they were scything through the boats ahead of them, but thankfully they were too far down the Division at that time to be a danger. I respected and even feared Pembroke. I wouldn’t have liked them on my tail for 2000 metres or more at all. I am not sure what would have happened.

So, in the event we “rowed over” clear of the pursing pack for all four days, Wednesday through Saturday. The first day, Wednesday, had been nervous and adrenalin filled. I suspect day two was the same. In fact I can’t remember much about them at all, really.

My abiding memories of that time are two fold. Of the final day, Saturday, I remember crossing the finishing line, rowing back down the course – as was the custom with our cox bearing the college flag, as Pembroke, who had duly “won their oars” by bagging four “bumps”, were parading theirs. We nodded in respect, and it seemed mutual. And I scanned the bank, hoping that my parents had made it. I had never been able to do much sport at school, and this small triumph meant a lot to me. They were not there, and I remember the bitter pang of disappointment.

But the special memory is the Friday afternoon, the third day. As I have mentioned above, a boat that completes the whole course has to row around 2,200 metres. It is a not insignificant distance, and takes, as I recall, just over six and a half or seven minutes of lung burning, muscle screaming effort. At the finishing line, it is the convention for the boats to “wind down” to allow the crews gulp in some air, and perhaps be sick, and then after a rest to paddle off back to their boat houses some way further up the river. I can promise that after 2,000 or more metres of full on rowing, that is a very sensible convention.

But that did not happen to us on that Friday. As I recall, we were well ahead of the Emmanuel VIII as we rolled inexorably up the Long Reach.

The steady, powerful rhythm had kicked in. I can’t speak for anyone else but I am clear that was not out of breath, not because I was not flat out but because the rhythm and balance of the boat made everything very smooth. We had pushed Emmanuel far behind, and reached the finish line several lengths clear, rowing at an easy pace, around 32 strikes to the minute. The usual order from the cox (Jim, a heavy guy but brilliant water man and race tactician, so worth the extra weight) would be “wind down!” I can’t remember if gave the order or not, but whatever happened, the boat did not stop. As I say, I can’t remember the precise details of how this peculiar and irrational decision was reached, but although the boat did not carry on at full power it simply switched instead we used to call “steady state”, the slower but rhythmic pace by which we trained for conditioning and technique. The boat simply rolled on and on, not resting, relentlessly leaving the other finishing boats, and, I think. some astonished spectators and coaches, far behind. On an on we went, as if by some collective osmosis a decision had been reached to display utter domination. It seemed effortless.

We made it back to the boat houses well before anyone else, without stopping. Nobody seemed tired. The river was empty of boats and following spectators had been shaken off. They had all been left far behind. It was very, very quiet. I can distinctly remember “throwing” the boat (lifting it out of the water in a clean lift), parking it on its rack in the Boat House, and going up the stairs to the changing rooms. We were already in the hot showers before the other boats came past, as almost all had to do to get to their own boat houses. We were singing out adopted “signature tune”, “Come Back My Love”, by “Darts”. Heaven alone knows why we had adopted it, but the raucous rendition, amplified by the show room walls, echoed out through the open windows of the boat house and pot across the river as the other boats passed by, trudging to their homes. I think we knew they could hear us.

It was later reported to us that the coach of the respected Pembroke boat had watched our progress up the Long Reach and wryly observed to a bystander:

“Now that is a very smooth machine.”

And so, on that day, it was. And so, sir, was your boys’ boat.

It was a long way from the best Downing crew ever produced. The next year later in the summer or “May” term the boat that was put out was both the most powerful and by far the most technically accomplished College crew that I ever saw at Cambridge: a beast of a crew. Would it have given the Blue Boat a run for its money? Oh, yes, and it included two full Blues and who some who were to go to become so. I still remember the sound of that boat. It was like an angry and by a rather menacing steam train. But I have the special memory of my one personal glimpse of excellence.

On a footnote, I mentioned the rather impressive start from the Downing Women’s boat above. I have an interest there. Just as at Sparta women were involved in the athletic excellence, so it was at Downing, and the women’s racing was being developed, and it is now the pre eminent women’s College for rowing, I believe. That pleases me very much.  I would like to add that for a couple of terms I was given the job of “finishing coach” to the newly established Downing Ladies, and to St Catherine’s College Ladies too. The St Catherine’s College Ladies won their oars two years in succession as I recall, and at least two of their member went on to represent Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club as Presidents.  I also had the distinction of being one of the few, or perhaps the only, College oarsman to row for in the Cambridge University Women’s Blue Boat. But that is another story…

Soon the “Lent Bumps” will start again. This year, there may or may not be a rather portly figure on the Bank who has not attended for many years. If so, I will keep out of the way. But I would like to hear that gun again, without too many of the nerves. I would like to see Downing Women 1 row: I am very, very pleased for and impressed by them. And perhaps hum a song quietly to myself an obscure and frankly awful song, “Come back my love”.

This post is dedicated to the memory of “Eddie”. We weren’t friends, but we were comrades for a while. Good row, Eddie.        

 Gildas the Monk 

Paulme February 18, 2013 at 12:14

A lovely piece. I see from the video clips that the crews wait for the
start gun. When I coxed in bumps at Durham, the technique was to go on about 6
and hope that you still had hold of the bung rope (I think it was called that)
at the gun. We rowed in heavy clinker fours and didn’t pussyfoot around when
it came to bumping. Damage to the bumped boat was a bonus.

Is college rowing at Oxford and Cambridge in relative decline these days? I
don’t think there was one single college boat at Henley last year. Thirty
years ago thee was hardly a race without one.

raymond barfoot
February 18, 2013 at 04:34

dear gildas the monk , thank you for a very delightful tale of rowwing. i
enjoyed it a great deal.i am not fortunate enough to have been to university.
i am glad to have seen this article.you are a modern day spartan wich from me
is a compliment and should be viewed as such.i also suffer from typos so dont
sweat the small stuff. that said again thank you for a rousing tale of rowwing
sportmanship.i totally loved it. good on you sir.you have made feel good
today,and that i am glad for. yours truly raymond b.

alan scott February 17, 2013 at 17:10

You can’t know the overwhelming feeling of rowing in an eight – or a four –
until you have actually done it. All PPCs should be put through it.

JuliaM February
17, 2013 at 12:41

Darts! Hurrah!

Mark in Mayenne
February 18, 2013 at 11:13

Let’s hear it for Julia!

Woman on a Raft
February 17, 2013 at 11:47

I enjoyed it. Now I know what they are up to out on the Ouse. The water
there is a cut channel for miles – wide, flat, straight – and they get out
early before the pleasure boats start moving. If it is misty it is like a
prehistoric water beast flying along, barely touching the water.

GildasTheMonk
February 17, 2013 at 13:13

What a lovely description

Daedalus X.
Parrot (non-Oxbridge as well, but polite) February 17, 2013 at 11:36

Fascinating, as ever, Gildas. You have just induced a curiosity in me for a
sport that, along with golf, I have long regarded as dull and pointless. So
much so, that being a nearby resident, I might actually take the kids to watch
these Lent Bumps you speak of.

If you attend yourself and see a tall rugby shirt wearing bruiser with two
squabbling teenagers, he will be delighted to buy you a pint at the nearby
Tivoli.

MTG February 17, 2013 at 11:17

A fascinating treat of new terms combined with nostalgia for the abandoned
goal of ‘excellence’.

Non-Oxbridge Type
February 17, 2013 at 10:08

To his lifelong regret, my late father graduated with a “rowing 3rd” from
Merton College, Oxford. To judge from this self-regarding piece, I expect that
the written work for your degree – assuming that you found the time to
graduate – was not over-burdened by such troublesome details as correct
spelling or proof-reading.

Anna
Raccoon February 17, 2013 at
10:17

Did you know that A. A. Gill, a writer I have the highest regard for, is
so dyslexic that he cannot write or type so that others can read – and has
to dictate all his work to copywriters?
Unfortunately, here on Anna
Raccoon, we don’t have a bank of sub-editors, there is only I, and I can’t
spell either….
Would you like to volunteer as a proof reader?

Mark February 17, 2013 at 11:10

What she said

Mudplugger
February 17, 2013 at 14:57

What he said about what she said.

Non-Oxbridge
Type February 17, 2013 at 15:21

Dear Anna Raccoon, Although long in years I am still in full-time
employment and spend far too much time away on business trips, so must
with regret decline your kind offer of becoming a voluntary proof-reader.
The reason for my commenting on this blog in the first place – I read it
for the usually uplifting nature of its articles – was the sheer
incongruity of the errors. In a piece peppered with such
self-congratulatory remarks as: “… a collection of very high achievers
with a strong pride in performance and excellence…”, “…Brilliant minds
were welcome, and there were many…”, let alone an ad hominem swipe at Ed
Milliband, I do not except to find basic typos and spelling mistakes of
the schoolboy/girl kind. Call me a pedant if you like: in my day spelling
and grammar were beaten into us at my Scottish state school via the use of
a leather strap, sometimes known as a tawse. It worked! Nowadays I suppose
I expect those with the benefit of a more expensive education than mine to
set an example. As it happens I don’t much care for Ed Milliband either,
and am not here to defend him. My point is that he who sets out to elevate
himself to a high position of excellence has the furthest to fall should
he fail to deliver excellence.

Anna
Raccoon February 17, 2013 at
15:34

Being pedantic is fun, but being pedanted at is less so, particularly
if you consider yourself largely pedantic.

Frankie
February 17, 2013 at 15:35

“… I do not except to find basic typos”. Surely you mean ‘expect’?

Hmmm. ‘He who sets out to elevate himself to a high position of
excellence has the furthest to fall should he fail to deliver
excellence’.

On your self-aggrandising scale, I believe your schoolboy/girl error
counts as a skydive from 80,000 feet without a parachute!

Leave the monk alone!!

Anna
Raccoon February 17, 2013 at
15:39

See! If I could proof read properly, not only would I have spotted
Gildas’ typo – but I would have had first hand glee at spotting
‘except’ – thank you for allowing me to enjoy it second hand!

Non-Oxbridge
Type February 17, 2013 at 16:15

OK, OK, my mistake. Look folks, it was just a mini-rant. Let’s not
sweat the small stuff. (Retires, muttering darkly about something or
other.)

Mudplugger February 17, 2013 at 21:35

N-O T,
Context is everything. If we were writing a great
literary work, a detailed technical specification or a legal document,
we would all give absolute focus to its critical detail, but here we
are not doing that.
This is just a group of virtual ‘pub regulars’,
most of whom have never actually met, nor are ever likely to, but who
submit topics for illumination and/or discussion, in a positive
bar-room banter, between like-minded folks who share mutual respect.
We often disagree, sometimes quite heartily, but always with respect.
We do not stoop to linguistic pedantry because that gets in the way of
the topic. We forgive each other our typo trespasses because getting
the topic across counts for so much more than that here.
Gildas The
Monk is a distinguished regular, whose breadth and depth of input to
our forum is quite staggering at times: I don’t know how he does it, I
just know that, whenever he does, the audience is usually spell-bound,
rather than spell-checker-bound.
Try it sometime, lighten up,
life’s too short to stay so anal.
(And if there are any typos,
split infinitives or prepositions ending sentences in the above,
please don’t think I give a shit.)

MTG February 17, 2013 at 17:17

Dear Non-Oxbridge Type,
Your seemingly fair comment constituted
sufficient ‘aggression’ to trigger a closely knit group of bloggers into
forming a circle with their wagons. That the innocent are sometimes shot
by partisans in their crusade against Establishment tyranny, is only
another failing of human nature.

Non-Oxbridge
Type February 17, 2013 at 22:22

Thanks to all who disagreed one way or another, and to MTG who
managed to see the bigger picture. It looks as if I stumbled on a cosy
and inward-looking clique, sadly. I will take extra care to delete
this blog from my Favourites folder on the way out.

Fred
Thrung February 18, 2013 at
04:49

I believe that there is a well known commenter syndrome to the
effect that anyone who applies pedantry to the grammar or spelling in
a post commits similar solecisms.

GildasTheMonk
February 17, 2013 at 12:27

What did we learn? Well, manners, to think cleary, to avoid pedantry, and
to look at the substance, not the form. Oh, and keep an open mind as to the
worth and merits of all people of whatever background, high or low. But you
are right; our tutors were not very bothered about spelling, within
reason.

Chromatistes
February 17, 2013 at 20:59

In the company of such distinguished and fluent correspondents as you
and Ms Raccoon I hesitate to show disagreement, but in my defence must
plead in favour of a degree of pedantry. My own academic discipline –
Mathematics – would be much the poorer without rigour. If our landlady
occasionally sprays apostrophes with the enthusiasm of a greengrocer on
speed, it can be hard to suppress the urge to spring into print.

By the way, when you exhort readers to ‘keep an open mind as to the
merits of all people …’, does that include the French?

macheath February 17, 2013 at 22:27

Your dates suggest that you and I must have been contemporaries –
though a deep-seated aversion to those cold mornings on the Cam kept me
well away from ‘boatie’ circles. I salute your fortitude and moral
fibre!

My own alma mater, just up the road, boasted a formidable lecturer who
was the acknowledged European authority in her specialist area and
regarded with awed veneration in international scholastic circles. During
our first seminar, she announced that her spelling was erratic, to say the
least, and we were to disregard any errors unless they were a bar to
comprehension.

It is a policy I have applied ever since; knowing that even the most
brilliant mind may slip up in spelling has, I think, made me a more
objective and fairer judge of the written word (as well as leading to a
career in the field of dyslexia).

Chromatistes
February 17, 2013 at 09:04

Perhaps, had you enjoyed an Oxford education, you would have written
‘complemented’, rather than ‘complimented’. However, your rowing experiences
were very significantly more successful than mine forty years ago: eight
appearances for Brasenose III in the Summer Eights, being bumped on each
occasion. When booking its annual dinner, the notoriously-behaved BNC Boat
Club would represent itself to the restaurant as the Brasenose Philosophical
Society – a fictional entity invented to facilitate acceptance.

An enjoyable account!

GildasTheMonk
February 17, 2013 at 10:10

Ouch. I did row against Brasenose, I remember that, but I can’t remember
where. It may have been at the Oxford Regatta in this year. As for boat club
dinners, I think I shall remain mostly silent on the matter, although there
was the infamous “Night of the Jaguar”….