ME AND WATER

I am at a loss to explain where my love of water comes from. Certainly not from my mother and the Welsh valleys where the shallow stony river ran black with coal dust and flooded at the drop of a hat, nor from my father and that long line of agricultural engineers, farmers and millers (wind-millers at that – not water millers).

I first boated at the age of six on the lake in Markeaton Park, Derby where they hired out small skiffs, and I learnt to row all by myself. Games of pirates around the islands became a great adventure. Family history has it that I marooned my very prim and proper older cousin on an island and then proceeded to bargain for her release.

At Nottingham High School I played rugby until aged fourteen when receiving a report which read “Nobody tries harder – or succeeds less” it was suggested that rowing might suit my bespectacled physique. And so I began to row.

The school was affiliated to Nottingham Union Rowing Club, between the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground and the football ground. There was that Leviathan. It was the most splendid craft for teaching school rowing on the fairly broad Trent. It had sixteen oars, eight a side, with a gangway up the middle so that several coaches could teach at the same time. A far superior method to using a bank fixed practice tub. It was steered by a large tiller with the cox standing and putting his weight against it to turn the heavy craft. Rumour had it that the adult club mounted a beer barrel on it and rowed to Newark and back, returning much the worse for wear. It was kept on a buoy under the shadow of Trent Bridge. Being fairly handy on the water I was often one of those who were charged with taking a tub over to Leviathan, untying and bringing it back over to the landing stage. Rowing a sixteen oar boat with two oars against the Trent current was never easy and occasionally we found ourselves at a landing stage further downstream! I then took my turn at coxing this monster (when it got up speed it began to roar). From it we graduated to fours (I do not remember any eights at that club – but perhaps the school could only use its own fours) Training became serious and I told my mother that it was steaks for breakfast from now on. (It never happened).

In the sixth form I found that I had lessons during rowing afternoons – and then time off when nobody else did – so I began to scull. The sculling boats were clinker built, probably many times the weight of a modern shell, but they did at least have sliding seats. One day, whilst revising for A-Levels, I took out a sculling boat, and once round the bend, out of sight of keen rowing masters, I began to revise my Shakespeare. Suddenly there was a roaring noise, a sudden sickening slide and I lost my Shakespeare and had a mad scramble to stay clear of the weir. (In those days there was a certain amount of detergent in the Trent and every weir had several feet depth of thick foam below it). In the several years I rowed at Nottingham I do not ever remember actually competing in anything. The rowing was performed for its own sake without having the focus of any actual racing.

The Trent at Nottingham is a real grown up river and receives from the city the civic respect and dignity it deserves. There are great sweeps of steps beside Trent Bridge and the grand sight of the County Hall. Eat your heart out Oxford – if Oxford gave half as much respect to the Thames that Nottingham does to the Trent it would be a very different place.

In my gap year, aged eighteen, I worked for the Missions to Seamen (Flying Angel) as a lay helper in Antwerp and later Rotterdam. In those days (1963) there was still a British Merchant Navy of maybe a thousand ships and I must have been on most of them. Access to the docks in Antwerp was by cobbled roads and we two lay helpers had an old left hand drive Morris Minor with which we used to terrify the locals when the local Belgian drivers weren’t terrifying us. One of the boats we regularly visited was on a weekly trip bringing Guiness from Dublin. The crew were notorious high livers (in the humble opionion of an eighteen year old school leaver) and generally had little time for the Missions to Seamen. However one day when we visited they were all looking very solemn and writing letters home. We enquired about the damage to the bows and were told they had just cut a petrol tanker in two and the petrol had not ignited.

Later I transferred to Rotterdam where access to ships had to be by water and we had a steel built hundred ton launch moored by the Euromast. It had a Dutch boatman who was a mad genius. Ask him the time and he would glance at the echo sounder. Knowing the state of the tide and the depth at that place he would immediately know the time. He was a little mad because when the Germas marched into Rotterdam he was aged ten and dropped a paper bag full of water onto the troops. They rushed into the building and bayonetted him. He never fully recovered. Mentioning anything German in front of him would set him in such a froth that he would need a whole day to recover. Each morning we would arrive with a list of ships to be visited and he would take us round, sometimes allowing me to helm the launch. Occassionally it was a rough trip – though he sometimes enlivened it on purpose, once passing between a Cunard liner and its tug.

I learnt how to leave a quay in a motor launch with surrounding vessels only a couple of metres away: turn the wheel hard towards the quay, slow ahead, thus turning the bows towards the quay and swinging the stern out, stop, turn the wheel the other way and slow reverse, backing out until able to go ahead. (This was later applicable to a punt leaving a bank.)

Once or twice we would arrive with our list and he would shrug and leave the quay, but when we got to the main river he would turn inland and announce a day off – and there was nothing we could do about it (even if we had been inclined too) We would go up the canals above the roof tops and he would produce what his wife thought was a picnic.

On Saturday nights we ran dances and one of our tasks as helpers was to make sure the local prostitutes did not get in. I seem to remember some interesting conversations as I tried to establish which was the captain’s wife and which was not. My slighly pious friend suggested that we try to assay the degree of make up as a way of telling – but experiments seemed to show this was less than adequate. We consulted the Chaplain but he assured us that it was easy to tell – but clearly did not feel up to revealing how to eighteen year olds.

I would like to go on to say that this was all useful experience for the next three years at Cambridge University. However Cambridge then was a very innocent place, with single sex colleges.

At Christ’s College I was immediately recruited into the boat club. I should explain that the great joy of rowing at Cambridge (and this would presumably apply to Oxford also) is that because each college has less than five hundred members of whom perhaps only fifty are at all interested in rowing – relative success in College rowing is available to anyone with enthusiasm – and I was an enthusiast from the start. However I do remember my first glimpse of the tiny river Cam, contrasting with the broad Trent and the even broader waters of the Maas and Rotterdam Harbour. I asked where the main river was – assuming that what I saw, with the college boathouses, must be just a backwater. It was not, it was the only water – coxes on the Cam earn their living with a vengeance. They have to negotiate corners that an eight will not straightforwardly steer round. Mind you in those days we did have “proper” rudders – that is they stuck out at the back and were substantial. You could put your weight against them and feel the boat slow very significantly as it skidded round.

The tortuous Cam does not lend itself to side by side racing except on one short section.

In the Michaelmas Term there was a “head of the river” type time trial with boats starting at 30 second intervals, the Fairbairn races. The times varied from fourteen to nineteen minutes. I rowed two in the Christ’s second boat in my first term. And stroked the second boat in the Michaelmas term of my second year.

Then in the other two terms there were the Lent Bumps and the May Bumps. Bumping races are the most exciting form of rowing I know (and would it be great to see it at Henley one year? It could be done!) The fifteen or so boats in each division each have stations on the bank with exactly 90 feet (I think) between each boat. There is a chain fixed to the bank and the cox must hold the other end until the start gun fires. There is a five minute gun and stop watches are started. Then a one minute gun and a coach starts a count down. With thirty seconds to go the boatman pushes the eight away from the bank attempting to get it sufficiently out from the bank with the cox still holding the chain. With clever timing one can hang back a little and then get the boat moving forward just to the point where the cox has to let go as the start gun fires. Then all hell breaks loose. The boat behind is only one and a half lengths away and determined to catch you, and the boat in front is only one and a half lengths ahead and your only target and safety from behind. If you can get an overlap on the boat ahead then a bell is rung from the bank to tell the cox to move over gently and touch the boat ahead. Move over too energetically and your boat will slow and you miss. Leave it too late and damage is certain. (Damage to boats is not infrequent and cynics might say that the purpose of bumping races is to provide employment for College boatmen.) The bumps took place on four succesive days and if you bumped a boat you exchange places with it in the division. The divisions are linked because the lower divisions row first and the head of each division after each race rows as the “sandwich boat”, last in the division above. Thus boats are able to climb through the divisions. Make four (or more) bumps in a term and you win your oar or rudder.

I have two great memories of bumping races. The first has to be the Lent Bumps of 1968 when as cox of Christ’s second eight I won my rudder. It started in a rather depressing way because on the first day we rowed over. The boat in front of us was a very fast boat which made its bump very quickly and left us with nothing. The next day we had Peterhouse II in front of us, already bumped on the first day, and we made short work of them. On the following day we bumped Jesus III and that took us to second in the division. On the last day we bumped Lady Margaret Boat Club III and became sandwich boat, immediately turning round to row again 45 minutes later. But the boat now in front of us was the fast boat we had failed to catch on the first day. Again they made a fast bump and we settled to another row over. But Trinity Hall II had started three above us (ie six and a half lengths away) and we were clearly faster. But it seemed an impossible target. However with a hundred yards to go I suddenly shouted that they had touched a bank (a total untruth!) and we sprinted for all we were worth just touching their rudder with only yards to go. Our coach made us wait there on the bank for what seemed ages. (It was the tradition that boats that won their oars carried the college banner on their triumphant return up river – and our bump was so unexpected that no one had thought to bring the banner just in case) Finally we received the heavy embroidered silk banner and we returned in glory. How I steered holding the banner I do not know – but there was a golden glow and choirs of angels and bands playing – and mere mechanics were not a problem. When we reached the boathouse they threw me half across the Cam. I remember very little of the subsequent hours and indeed days.

The other memory is somewhat less glorious. In my last term I was the coach of a Rugby boat. (An eight full of Rugby players rowing to keep fit in the Summer term) They were not God’s gift to rowing and I was a very suitable coach for them. Their cox was chosen chiefly for his weight rather than for his ability to tell strokeside from bowside. They started about fifth in their division on the day in question. They were comprehensively bumped on first post corner. Now when I say comprehensively I mean it. The bumping boat forced their rudder over so that not only did they fail to take the corner, but their bows swung out to the outside of the corner and anchored them firmly into the earth bank. Meanwhile the cox committed that sin which mattered in those days of large external rudders, he let his lines go slack and they promptly looped around the bows of the bumping boat which stopped on the inside of the bend, holding our stern there. Time went very slowly at this point. Our boat was stretched across the river blocking it entirely and the crew were interested to note that round that bend at full racing speed were coming no less than twelve eights. Of course I turned round on my bicycle and tried to stop them. I could do no less – but have you ever tried to stop a racing eight during a bumping race? All twelve eights attempted to pass over under or through our boat. The crew threw themselves into the river and swam for it, most of them managing to grab the bows of eights before they ran them down. Nobody was injured. Why nobody was injured I shall never know. There were smashed blades and rudders and bits of boat all over the place. We recovered the boat by towing it back with a skiff and then surveyed the boat in the boathouse. Each boat that had passed over it had carved out a nick in the side, and the boatman quite neatly inserted new wood to fill these. The bump was awarded against us, but then all the boats below that had to re-row the following day (mostly in different boats!) My only lasting regret is nobody took a photograph!

I became a cox having realised that the height of my achievement as an oarsman of nine and a half stone had been to stroke the college second boat. If I wanted to make the first boat it would have to be as cox – which I achieved in my last term when we made three bumps. I mastered the art of “washing off” a chasing boat: this is only possible with the large old fashioned rudders and the bends on the Cam make it an advantageous move. When a bumping boat is slowly approaching from behind and just to one side, a strong movement of the rudder during the stroke sends a wave straight at the opposition which can slow them quite significantly. If you can position yourself so that your boat is also thereby helped to turn into a corner it all makes sense. We set up a coaching exercise with our second boat with me coxing and our first boat trying to bump it. Despite an appreciable difference in straight line speed they failed to bump, I washed them off each time. Next term I coxed the first boat!

We began the first experiments with amplification in the first boat. The idea being that it would be possible to pass instructions to oarsmen without the opposition being able to hear (and in the bumps without the crowd drowning any noise the cox could make) Being a man with a loud voice I did not really like to use the microphones – but we persevered.

When coxing I missed the exercise of rowing and returned once again to sculling. Not this time in the clumsy old clinker boats of school days, but in a best wooden shell which was a joy to use. Sculling on the Cam is a somewhat all or nothing exercise. Either you skulk out of the way of eights or you stay ahead of them (which is not as hard as it sounds given the twisty nature of the Cam) Occasionally I coached lower eights from a sculling boat.

Annually in the Autumn term Christ’s boat club held an afternoon knockout pair oar competition in the club’s two matched training skiffs, over a hundred yard course by the boathouse. The whole club was entered and we drew for partners. A beer barrel and roasting chestnuts entertained those who were knocked out in the early rounds. In 1969 much to everyone’s surprise I won it. The heavyweight oarsmen were not suited to the short course and sculling ahead of eights had given me certain (largely panic induced) sprinting abilities. The trophy was a magnificent silver trophy which I held for six months.

But there are three sections to the river in Cambridge, divided by the two weirs. The rowing is only on the lowest section. Above Jesus weir and lock are the backs – (the backs of the colleges). Originally of course the river was just the goods entrance for the colleges – and barges would have delivered supplies) But now of course it is punts that hold sway there. I remember in my first week, the boy in the next room to mine suggesting that we go down to the river and get a punt. I asked what a punt was. He said a flat bottomed boat pushed with a pole. I explained that rivers were far too muddy and or deep to rely on propulsion by that method. Shortly and over the next forty years I was to learn my error.

So I learnt to punt in Cambridge. Cambridge punting is not classically “pure” in the opinion of those who learnt elsewhere. Briefly Cambridge punters stand on the “deck”, “till”, or “box” as it is variously known. They stand facing directly the way the punt is going, at the back of the punt. Forty years later I began to explore the various types of punting and to understand their relationships. Then, skills were honed by various methods. There was the low bridge at which one punted at speed, laid down the pole, jumped onto the bridge and back down onto the punt (if still there). There was punt jousting and punt racing. Several punts would tie together and punt up the river as one great raft. Spectators took their part too – the low bridges on the backs often have people who stand around ready to give a little tug on any pole within their reach causing the unwary to suddenly fall in. I still never raise my pole after a bridge without being wary of this.

I owned one sixth of a punt (and presumably still do if it is still in existence, I never sold it – so who has my one sixth of a punt?) Still I am not complaining. Three years use of a punt for ten pounds was good value even then. I cleverly sought out scientists with long working hours as my other partners in ownership – so that as the only arts student I had a monopoly of use much of the time.

The upper river is the Granta reached by the boat rollers from the backs – and there is magic country. I once in the dusk saw in the distance a fire with elves dancing silently

round it (they were probably brownies but why spoil a good story?) The only destination is the Orchard at Grantchester for a cream tea – and the clock still standing still. When I first met my wife I took her to Grantchester by punt in May (which would have been a more romantic exercise if only it had not snowed).

And then I left. Voluntarily, and of my own accord, after attaining a degree, in rowing (and I believe there were a few lectures in the mornings) I left that playground for the real world. I have been trying to get back ever since as far as conscience and the real world will allow which means a little, from time to time.

After two waterless years at Lincoln (in retrospect they need not have been waterless – there are plenty of rivers around there) I went to Portsmouth for three years where I joined Southsea Rowing Club. They used racing boats adapted to sea use, slightly wider with self draining. Sculling in and out of Portsmouth Harbour dodging destroyers, and hovercraft which used the same section of beach, made for an interesting time.

One day I did a sponsored scull over to the Isle of Wight and back. The local paper was most interested that my time was considerably shorter than the ferry which was notoriously slow.

Then I moved to Bristol. I missed having a boat. We decided to buy a small car to transport our growing family and then realised we needed a trailer to be able to camp. The paper we bought had a small boats section next to the trailers and it occurred to us that a boat on a trailer could also be used as a trailer for camping purposes – but we then would have a boat as well. So we bought a clinker dinghy without mast and with a small outboard. This we towed around and launched on the Bristol Avon and also on the Grand Union Canal. I did not find it all that satisfactory because it was in origin a sailing design and unstable if not on one tack or the other. So eventually I built a punt.

It was designed very much as a camping punt / floating playpen. It was twenty feet long and four feet wide, (two feet wide at the ends with delicately curved sides, but flat bottomed with sloping ends) and a central luggage compartment. It had a mounting for an outboard – but it was also quite satisfactorily puntable. It had its own purpose built trailer with winch and we had many happy holidays with it on the Thames and the Broads and up the Bristol Avon and on the Kennet and Avon Canal.

Having been built in a twelve foot garage it had to be in two sections which were bolted together. The design was generally satisfactory though that join in the middle always worried me. The hardest strain on the punt was when it was being towed on its trailer. A bump in the road would put enormous leverage on that central joint. It had to be remade several times. Our three children grew up with that punt. Indeed I can date its completion exactly for my wife came to me as I gloated over the completed article and said “You know we designed that boat for two children? …”

The following year (1977) I took it to Henley Royal Regatta for my first time. (Christ’s College did not send boats there in my time at Cambridge so I had never seen the regatta before.) We camped in Mrs Brown’s field at Wargrave. It was a water meadow bordering Hennerton Backwater and the most delightful place to have a small boat. The George and Dragon was just a few hundred yards away by boat under the very low bridge which protects the upper end of the backwater from boats higher than say 18 inches. Hennerton Backwater is probably a section of the River Loddon which the Thames has “captured”. It would probably have naturally become blocked and disappeared many years ago if it were not for the determined maintenance presumably by the owners of its banks. But it is part of the Thames and being a place in which Thames water flows there is a right of navigation through it. Mrs Brown was a delightful elderly lady who made it a pleasure to camp there.

When she died her house was demolished to make more room for the road and a new house constructed – but we were never able to camp there again and the water meadow is very overgrown.

That year my wife wrote a thesis whilst I took all three children (aged 5, 3, 1) camping and punting on the Thames starting from the Anchor below Lechlade. The boys aged 5 and 3 wore life jackets and our one year old daughter wore a harness securely tied on because she was crawling everywhere. The boys used happily to steer the outboard. One memorable day I had just changed our daughter and turned to dispose of the by products when I heard a loud splash. No daughter was to be seen, however I pulled on the rope and up she came again without too much fuss. An hour later the outboard propeller hit a stone and broke the pin which held it. This was not too much of a problem as I carried a spare. But when I punted alongside a bank to fix it a water rat shot out of its hole in alarm and dived straight into the punt causing consternation amongst the passengers. Later that day we phoned my wife and the eldest boy said “Mummy, we had a lovely day, Elizabeth fell in, the propeller fell off and Mr Ratty jumped on board!” My wife arrived the following morning.

After Mrs Brown died we had to find another place to camp for Henley Regatta and Mr Copas generously agreed to a good price for an impecunious clergyman which he continued for some twenty years. At first we camped below Hambledon Lock and in recent years just above the lock.

Henley Regatta is a great water festival. There are several different things happening at the same time. There is of course the rowing competition with its participants and supporters. But there is also the rowing reunion which overlaps with that and is entertained by it. And there is the social occasion. And there is the boat festival of all those spectators on boats, unpowered and powered. And there is the commercial hospitality event. And then increasingly there is the picnic occasion which attracts people who may have no rowing connection at all. The whole thing is run by Aunty – the ponderous machinery of authority – the Stewards, who maintain the course at 1 mile 550 yards, and the hemlines at below the knee, and adminster slapped wrists to any member or guest who has the audacity to attend the first sitting for lunch and remain at their table after two o’clock. On one particularly hot day the public address declared “Gentlemen will not remove their jackets”, at which point all the gentlemen in the small boats (and thus beyond the authority of the Stewards) stood up and removed their jackets. It is all very British and I wouldn’t change a thing – including my right to have a grouse about it!

It is the one great British sporting event which includes a Christian service on Sunday, (the final day). At ten o’clock in Henley Parish Church there occurs what I can only describe as “Rowing Matins”. The very full service starts with the National Anthem, Anglican Chant is sung as lustily as it was fifty years previously in the chapels of the public schools by these very same people. Some elderly rowing dignitary reads a lesson, the local choir sing worthily, they dig out some rowing cleric to preach a sermon. I am becoming a connoisseur of these sermons over the years. They come in two flavours. There is the rowing sermon and the “you are men of influence” sermon. The rowing sermon largely centres around “we all swing together” or words to that effect. We are reminded of the eight in the bible (St Paul talks of “the ark, wherein eight souls in all were saved” – and everybody knows coxes are damned). Then there is the observation that the church is at the finish of the Henley Course. The cox cannot see where he is going for all these hairy oarsmen flailing about – but look above them and there is the church in the distance – aim for the church and you can’t go wrong. One daring preacher used the parable of the Unrighteous Steward – but it was alright, it worked, they made him a Regatta Steward anyway! Finally the Harvard crew of 1908 take the collection in suede shoes and though we would like to sing the National Anthem again we can’t because we have already sung it once and so the service ends. There is just time to get suitably refreshed for the first race at 12 noon.

I have been to the Regatta now for 25 years in which time I have missed five days, four of them because I was in hospital. My typical regatta day goes like this: punt from Hambledon Lock at 9am the 2½ miles to Henley Bridge, arriving at 10am go shopping for lunch and tea, at 11am meet guests at Singers Wharf (the public landing stage for small boats, maximum stay two hours not five days), punt to finish and tie to boom, watch a few races and drink Bucks Fizz (sparkling wine and orange juice). This place and time is the precise place and time for Bucks Fizz, the Bucks side of the river on the Henley Course during the Regatta. I tell my guests we are Bucks and those over the other side are Berks (Burks) - and that I can’t think of any way to remember that! The programmes are of course written for the convenience of those in the official enclosures so that the Bucks crew is always shown above the Berks crew. From a boat you have therefore to hold the programme upside down! Not only that but the programmes are only available at the entrance to the regatta by the Leander Club which makes them almost unobtainable by the people on boats and down the course at Remenham.

Then the Stewards wonder why there is less participation than there might be. Make the programmes more available! Run a special FM Regatta Radio with a fuller commentary and information about what is going on, interviews with oarsmen, coaches, even stewards. Publish a newsletter keeping ordinary people in touch with the regatta and rowing news and gossip. And all this could make money for the regatta!

Lunch either there or further down the course. After lunch punt the mile down to Remenham to land on the Berks side to stretch legs and see the great variety of bars and stalls there. Back up the Fawley side and watch more races and have tea. I have often raised money for various charities by giving a day on the punt at the regatta and that has raised several thousand pounds over the years.

On the Saturday we go on to have a barbeque somewhere in the evening and then back to near the public enclosure for the fireworks at 10pm. Some care is needed with a punt in the dark to avoid the unnecessary (and largely alcohol induced) wash. Bright lanterns are needed. The fireworks are fantastic and to view them from a small boat surrounded by other small boats makes for an atmospheric evening.

The Sunday racing ends with a very public school prize giving for which unpowered boats are permitted onto the course (but not allowed to see or hear anything because the standing spectators block the view and the public address does not carry) The winners have their moment of triumph and how they deserve it!

I worry about all those plastic boats continually circling up and down the course. They can’t hear much of the commentary, they probably haven’t got programmes, and yet they come and drink and wear smart or stupid clothes and generally become part of the scene – but why? The unpowered boats are much better placed to follow the racing – indeed they are frequently much closer to the racing crews than anyone else. I have many times been splashed by passing crews. My ultimate involvement was with a race in which I think I may have changed the result! I was tied to the boom opposite the start of the public enclosure for a coxless fours race. The leaders were on the Berks side and the crew on the Bucks side were perhaps a length and a half down. The leaders touched the boom on their side but recovered. As the crew on my side were only 15 feet away from me, I told them what had happened and to pull their … suggested words to the effect that, if they wanted to, they could win (I have a very loud voice) and they sprinted and won by three feet. It might have happened anyway – who knows – but I felt good.

Wash is a problem at Henley Regatta. Around Temple Island the Bucks side bank is eroding at a rate of feet every year. As a punter I can feel where the bank originally was, some ten yards out from the present bank, and inside that is thick mud. That wash comes from the Umpire’s Launches – not just during races – for that wash is over the other side – but it is also on the way to the start that the damage happens. An umpire to whom I complained of this took the trouble to explain that the launches had to go at speed towards the start in order that races should happen on time. Fair enough – only why not start out five minutes earlier and go slower – problem solved? ( George Leslie got worked up about the umpires launches in the 1880s! ) Wash during races one has to accept – though there are plenty of coaching boats about which make less wash than the lovely boats traditionally used.

Tying a small boat to the booms is complicated by this wash which tends to jerk fittings and bang boats against the boom. I have found the solution to be elastic ropes which I keep for the purpose and allow much gentler movements.

The other boats which create wash at Henley are a somewhat different case. They are the small hire aluminium boats with outboards. They make a sharply peaking wash which splashes over the sides of punts and other small boats.

Left to me I would ban the internal combustion engine from the river! I know I used to have an outboard and it was fun – but it was also noisy and difficult to avoid polluting the river. Unpowered boats plus steam and electric would make the river a very much more pleasant place to be. And for one reason or another steam and electric boats make much less wash! Why is this? Because their traditional hull shapes and propeller settings make less wash. Why shouldn’t an internal combustion engined boat use these same shapes? I don’t think there is any valid reason – its just that the enormous power available from internal combustion engines has removed the need to think about the efficiency of the hull shape - why not have a blunt front and square back if brute engine power can still force the boat along at a good speed? Put a couple of storeys onto it. Build in a bar. Double glazing! Why not a swimming pool? Several boats that almost certainly never leave the freshwater Thames have radar.

The whole purpose of being on a river is to experience the river. It is not to get from A to B which is better accomplished on a motorway. Nobody appreciates a motorway for its beauty and peace -–just for its efficiency as a means of transport. But a river is different. A river is about peace and tranquillity and gliding gently forward. So many boats miss the point.

There are of course less tranquil methods of water transportation which do not use engines. In 1976 having reached the grand old age of thirty and feeling my age – my wife presented me with windsurfing lessons. I turned up at a gravel pit in what was to become the Cotswold Water Park and three of us changed into wetsuits. The lake did not look promising. Downwind – directly downwind – an enormous gravel extraction conveyor belt was grinding away. We were warned that unlike most beaches the depth of water only two feet out was over ten feet. But I found that standing on a small boat was something that came more or less naturally after punting. After some balancing exercises and learning to rig the board we progressed to actually raising the sail from the water and finally to actually moving. There is a thrill of speed in board sailing which can be obtained even though one is actually only moving at a walking pace in a 5mph wind. Since that day I don’t think I have ever been unaware of the wind direction.

We learnt to tack in the most primitive way, basically by stopping sailing, and holding the mast by the uphaul, swinging the sail round until the board faced the other way. Gybing we were told was not possible – at least until we became experts. Harnesses were not for sale at that stage and using them was unknown in Britain. I realise now that in 1976 windsurfing was a very new idea and few people had much experience of it. I bought my first board for £30 pounds. It was a “Scirocco Storm”. I think it was a prototype of a board with the idea of advertising the Scirocco VW car. This enterprise was a predictable failure in that the car turned out not to be suitable for attaching any roof rack then known. The board was a bright blue windsurfer copy with a few alterations. It was incomplete and I had to add the daggerboard and fin cassettes, and also do something about the edges which were unfinished and simply stuck out all round. A second hand mast and sail and boom cost another £25 and I was independent. Partly because of the way I started I have specialised in longboard, light wind sailing. I can sail when other windsurfers don’t even get out of the car. I can go upwind at better than 45 degrees. Whilst other windsurfers simply go across the wind I sail triangles, each time trying to get further upwind round markers. Force four is about my limit. At that speed my longboard roars and creates a wake like a speed boat. I guess my top speed is probably only something like 15mph but it feels like 50mph! Without a harness the sail is occasionally simply plucked out of my hands.

Poole Harbour is a great place to windsurf. The tides are complex. Basically there is a week after the full and new moons when one can sail all day and then there is a week when its all mud. Two days after the moon comes the highest tide peaking at about 11am and staying till 4pm. On that day, with a good wind one can wet the feet of pedestrians walking around to Sandbanks. And if that sounds a strangely adolescent joy for a middle aged clergyman – well so what if it is? There is in playing, an exercise in catching up with ones childhood. This came home very strongly to me when, sometime after my mother’s death, I finally mastered a nuance of the flare gybe which had previously escaped me. And as I pulled it off for the first time I heard a voice inside my head saying “Mummy, mummy, look at me!” I hope never to quite complete my childhood! I have windsurfed in the Cotswold Water Park, on the Thames, on the Bristol Avon, on the Kennet and Avon Canal, in Poole, and numerous seaside places, on the Broads, in Brittany and on the Mediterranean.

One Summer we took the punt to the Broads. We found a camp site with a bank over which I could launch and recover the punt. For some reason which now escapes me we only used the outboard. We had a canoe for the oldest boy and a windsurfer. (Come to think of it, maybe towing that lot, perhaps it was as well we had the outboard.) The 4hp motor was just enough that I helped take several sailing barges under bridges.

There are four basic styles of punting to be seen today. Oxford, Cambridge, Thames and Racing. They can be identified as follows.

· In Oxford they stand in the bows of the punt on the sloping portion and punt stern first. There are historic reasons for this which I will explain in a moment.

· In Cambridge they stand on the deck, box or till and punt bows first.

· On the Thames outside Oxford they punt in the Cambridge manner but standing down in front of the till.

· And racing punts have their own special style with the punter generally more or less in the middle of the punt which is double ended.

The Thames style appears more or less to be disappearing.

The original punting style appears to have been none of the above! Punts were originally run. That is the punter walked to the centre or even further towards the bows. Dropped the pole in and walked back to the stern facing backwards. George Leslie ("Our River", 1881) punted in this manner as a matter of course, but does mention that some people in Oxford have a new fangled way of managing from the back – and that though this will never catch on for punting any distance, it is quite convenient for managing in crowded situations!

What changed the method was that as punts became used for pleasure rather than just commerce and fishing they became narrower and also the comfort of passengers became an issue. In Oxford they seated the passenger on a mattress which needed support, so the mattress was placed up against the till leaving the rest of the punt for the punter to walk up and down. When more passengers were carried the punter retreated to the back of the punt (still the bows!) and the punt seat (back rest) was added.

The method then changed from running to pricking (punting from a stationery position). The Thames style changed in a similar way except that the memory of which was the bows and which the stern was retained! Punting came to Cambridge relatively late (only the 1900s) and there the method was slightly different. It is basically the Thames style, bows first, except that it became customary to stand on the till facing directly towards the bows, rather than towards the side as in Oxford. The friendly antagonism between Oxford and Cambridge causes various, largely untrue, things to be said about the other style. In particular it is often said of the other place that they stand on the front of the punt. (Whilst there is just a vestige of truth in this, the implication that the punt proceeds with the punter foremost is never true as far as I know, anywhere.

My attempts to learn how to punt backwards (to improve my manoeuvring skills) prove that it would be a very difficult exercise anyway! I have no experience of racing punting which is different and, at least in its steering and in the finish of the stroke facing backwards, more related to running.

See Medley on the Osney Lock to Godstow Lock section of http://thames.me.uk for a further theory about why Oxford punters punt the way they do.

There are only two main centres of punting today, Oxford and Cambridge. The experience is very different in each. In Cambridge, though the Cam may be crowded, it will only ever be with other punts. The Backs of the Colleges and their gardens are worth seeing. The Upper River, called the Granta, (separated from the backs by a weir and punt rollers) leads through countryside to Grantchester and cream teas in the Orchard.

In Oxford there is the Thames (which some in Oxford perversely call the Isis) with its river traffic and rowing. Punters need to know what they are doing here. But to the North is the river Cherwell, with two usable entrances from the Thames. Almost nothing of the architecture of Oxford can be seen from the river. So in Oxford punting is done for its own sake, whilst in Cambridge it is often as a means of sight seeing. Presumably this explains why there are Chauffeured punts in Cambridge but not so much in Oxford.

Eventually the camping punt reached the end of its natural life. The glue with which it had been assembled was not quite up to the job and the joints slowly deteriorated. It became harder and harder to maintain it and eventually I had to admit it and celebrated with a good bonfire. So what next? I could not conceive of life without a boat. But the design of the old punt had been made with small children in mind - and they were now no longer children. I began to work on the design of a new punt which would be longer and narrower and more traditional in many ways. I knew what I wanted from years of punting and watching other punts. But it did have to differ from the most traditional Thames punts in that I wanted to keep it on a trailer and this meant that solid timber sides were not suitable. In the end I came up with a punt with 15" sides, 25 feet long and 2 foot eight inches wide. (2'8" is significant when trying to build economically with expensive ply. The ply comes in sheets 8' x 4' and 8' / 3 = 2' 8") I tell people it is a mathematical punt. It started life on a spread sheet. The curves of both bottom and sides are cube law. The distance by which any point deviates from parallel is proportional to the cube of its distance from the centre (multiplied by suitable constants so that the ends are 1' 4" wide (half the centre) and the bottom reaches the top of the sides at the ends. These figures were calculated every three inches along the punt.

A traditional punt is made by first making two sides of about 1" thickness and then joining these together with treads (11 or 13) - the crosswise planks at intervals along a punt. These joints are reinforced by knees which hold the angle required and brace the sides. In a full timber punt they usually go to the top of the sides. The bottom is then added in a softer wood. In its life time a punt will probably be given several bottoms. The bottoms are tarred underneath and painted above, whilst the sides are varnished. One end of the punt is decked in for a few feet. This braces and stabilizes the construction - and of course in the Cambridge method of punting the punter stands on this till or deck.

My version achieves a similar result but starts with the bottom. The 3/8" marine ply bottom was laid out in rectangle form without cutting the shape, and the 1" ply treads, 6" wide were positioned to first cover the joints and then equally between those joints. The treads were first cut to length, each one a slightly different length, so defining the curve of the sides. The two sides were then prepared flat. 3/8ths mahogany marine ply, 15" at the centre. The joints were made on the inside with another overlapping piece of ply. The curve of the bottom was carefully calculated and marked onto the sides every three inches and then they were cut to that curve. The knees were cut from 1/2" mahogany and then the punt was assembled, screwing and gluing using a two part epoxy resin. 1" x 1" hardwood pieces were added between the treads to reinforce the joint. These curved slightly as the screws tightended then tto the shape of the side. 1" x 1" rails were routed to take the 3/8" top of the sides and glued in place. A vertical piece of ply was fixed at the start of the deck with a 1" x 1" rail. The ends were made in 1"x 3" mahogany. A framework for a small hatch into the till was made and then the till was decked with alternate mahogany and iroko planks which give a pleasing striped appearance. Another much smaller till with hatch was added at the bows as a place to keep ropes, anchor etc. The entire punt was then sanded and coated with glass resin (the same as the glue only without the filling which thickens it.) The gives a lovely smooth mahogany colour - but it still needs varnishing because the resin would deteriorate in uv sunlight and needs to be protected. Finally gratings were made to fill in between the treads. This took a very significant proportion of the total time. Every grating needs to be made to fit exactly in its place. The seat backs were made with 2" x 1/2" mahogany sandwiching basketwork weaving. A punt table was made to slide between to the two seat positions in the same timbers as the till. Two leather straps were arranged to carry the spare punt pole on the non punting side.

The punt was built in a hayloft with a door 2' 10" wide, ten feet up a wall. So the initial ply cuts were made outside and everything taken up a ladder through a trapdoor and the punt was finally extracted once my three grown up children were lined up under the door to catch it.

I launched it on the Thames at Oxford for the first time and punted up the Cherwell. Despite knowing that it must be stable it was a nervous moment. It was ceremonially launched on a local lake by a friend of mine and that was the start of various fund raising for charities that have now raised more than twice the cost of building.

Since then I have punted the length of the Thames from Lechlade to Teddington (126 miles in 6 days). Lechlade upstream to Cricklade and back (above the navigable section where the currents are swift and the river shallow) and then 100 miles Lechlade to Windsor. Altogether about 700 miles in the new punt. I have kept a log book and also separate accounts of the major trips.

In 1995 I had a sabbatical term at Cambridge and sculled and coxed and coached most days for Christ’s College Boat Club. This was a very different experience with half the club now being women. I was generally impressed by their rowing and attitude. Dick the old boatman was still in th boathouse and I immediately found that he treated me exactly as he had treated me forty years earlier – as the immature undergraduate for whom he had a half hearted grudging respect for my enthusiasm if not for my skill.

The old fine sculling shell was I think the same boat I had used forty years previously and it was beginning to show its age. In particular the plastic ‘canvas’ over the front of the boat had begun to perish – but Dick was not noted for inspecting his boats too often and appeared blissfully unaware of the problem.

One day a storm blew up as I sculled down to Baitsbite Lock. Coming back up the long reach there were waves which came over the canvas and slowly the boat began to settle. When I got back to the boathouse the bows were in the water and I found I could not lift the boat on my own. So I fetched Dick from his hidey hole and we lifted it together and turned it over, whereupon a steady stream of water began to pour out. Dick could not believe it and examined the entire hull for cracks before grudgingly admitting that the water had entered via the canvas. He then proceeded to lecture me on reporting problems with boats and produced a reel of black insulating tape and asked me to seal the cracks in the canvas. So I sealed all 126 cracks using most of the reel. The boat looked most remarkable – and finally Dick noticed the problem. It was probably the last boat repair he did – replacing that canvas with the help of another boatman.

In 2007 we had a reunion VIII entered in the Fairbairn races. The boathouse was very different. Dick had been replaced by Kat Astley – and she was about as different a boatperson as it is possible to get from Dick! He was ancient and she was young. He was a splendid craftsman in wood and she was good at maintaining plastic boats. He was not (at least within living memory!) an oarsman and she was rowing for Cambridge. He would not have known what a computer was if you threw it at him – and now the boathouse was on broadband and outings arranged by email. The clubhouse was filled with rowing machines – and I think probably most of the work in getting fit was done in the evenings with Kat exhorting her slaves to even greater sweaty efforts. (In my day the only training was done afloat).

I remembered all the crew from my time at the College in the 1960s. I was cox. I arranged to spend the week in Cambridge and on the Tuesday and Wednesday sculled down to Baitsbite Lock and back (the entire normal rowing stretch at Cambridge) Also on the Wednesday I found a College IV lacking a cox and was able to get my hand in. Which was just as well because the river is completely closed to crews for the two days of the Fairbairn races which meant that there was absolutely no chance of practicing before the race.

Most of that reunion VIII took their first proper stroke in forty years at the actual start of the race! Of course as cox I had quite a deal to do in manoeuvring down to the start with the other 62 VIIIs taking part. But it had to be done with single oarsmen taking individual strokes. There was a medium current and a wind which seemed calculated to make the start difficult. Spectating on the Thursday I had seen an undergraduate boat take the start badly and hit the bank three times, on each occasion throwing bow out of his seat. On the third time he solemnly cursed the boat, the river and everyone in sight and then ran off sobbing. I made a mental note that this was probably to be avoided if at all possible – particularly since my friend Jeremy was rowing bow and I instinctively felt that he would not thank me for repeating that particular mistake.

However as we approached the start we had to be considerably sideways to the river because of the wind. There were nervous sounds from the bows and I had to sternly urge them to have faith (omitting, of course, to mention in what). We however from the coxing point of view made the perfect start. I was relieved to find that whatever else could or could not be said about our ancient crew they were at least mature oarsmen and the boat was not rocking about or lurching as I feared it might. Banham’s corner went well and the boat was steering nicely. We settled to about 28 and Chris Lloyd our stroke (and by far the most experienced oarsman in the boat) was relatively content. I found – what I always find in boats of all sorts - that the steering came naturally. I was able to ‘engage auto-pilot’ and spend my energy in the tactics and coaching

The Fairbairn VIIIs start at a nominal 30 seconds apart – and it was understood that elderly entrants like us would be given rather longer before the next boat since overtaking was prohibited on the first part of the course and difficult on the last part. The boats were also supposed to be started in order of likely finishing times. Unfortunately the two boats behind us were each more than three minutes faster over the course.

So as we approached the sharp bend under the footbridge at Chestnut Corner, I became aware that stroke was making muttering noises, “Six Lengths”, “five lengths”, “Two lengths” “On your left”. I should explain that it is quite difficult for a cox to look round during a race and it was as well that stroke happened to be facing in that direction. We took the corner as tightly as we could and the overtaking boat went wide and passed us.

We then settled to the long slog down under the railway bridge and down the reach to First Post Corner. I felt that we were possibly beginning to pick up speed as the memories of forty years ago began to synchronise a little. We entered the very twisty bends with the next boat some six or seven lengths behind us. Passing in this section would be difficult or impossible (and that is why Cambridge major university races are bumping races). I went wide into the next bend and signalled the overtaking boat through on the inside. The shape of the bank on the outside makes this very nearly impossible – but we almost got away with it. I had emphasised to the crew the need for the outside side to help the boat round in corners and stroke side did a superb job and we just touched with one blade and carried on.

We completed the course in 19 minutes and 35 seconds coming 61^st out of 63. The one undergraduate boat that we beat (who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves) was only 2 seconds slower than us over the first half of the course but then lost 30 seconds over the second half. I conclude that they too were overtaken by one or two boats but that they made a mess of being overtaken and so lost time. (Which is to say our oarsmen beat them by 2 seconds and the cox by 30 seconds!)