On Saturday 21st September 2024, the Rowers of Walberswick (R.O.W.) took part in the Great River Race, London’s river marathon. The race on the Thames is for fixed seat rowing boats with a minimum of four oars, a cox and a passenger and is the largest event of its kind in Europe. This year 266 boats from the UK, Ireland, and Europe competed. The challenging event covers 21.6 miles of The Thames, from Millwall to Richmond and the crews navigate under 28 bridges.

Set up in January 2024 R.O.W. started training for the race in March, and has also been restoring two coastal coxed 4’s, Guinevere and Lancelot. The race team - Dani Church, Rachel Aldridge, Emma Webb, Sam Webb, Lucy Waring, Lena O'Shea and Beth Cashell, had been training in earnest to race in Puffin, Dani Church’s fixed seat rowing boat, for the last two months. On the day the team of seven rotated, taking turns with 4 rowing, one coxing, and two on rest at all times.

Rachel says it was a total adventure from start to finish: “The most thrilling moment for me was when I was coxing and we came towards Tower Bridge the first of the 28 bridges.  It was wonderful to have supporters from Walberswick on a couple of bridges along the way too.”

20 years ago Dani rowed Old Bob, the Walberswick ferry boat, in the race. This year the ‘Magnificent Seven’ completed the distance in 3 hours, 9 minutes. That’s around 6 minutes per bridge and 7 miles per hour for 3 hours! Puffin was the fastest Women’s Clayton Skiff and came 3rd in the Clayton Skiff category. They passed the Houses of Parliament at 14:32 in slightly choppy water.

Dani says “We all had such an amazing time, and I finally fulfilled my vision of a women’s rowing team, a dream I have had for a long time.”

The race started in 1988 with 61 boats crewed by a bunch of enthusiasts ranging from young scouts to hardened offshore rowing veterans coming from diverse organisations such as rowing clubs, pubs, schools, boating societies and the armed services.

All members of the group will continue to train and row for pleasure over the Autumn months, so if you see them out on the river Blyth, give them a wave, but don’t expect those actually rowing to wave back, they need both hands on the oars!

The group would like to thank everyone who has supported them on their R.O.W journey so far, in particular the coaches Will and Tom and marine technician, David. 

We will share more photos from the team on the website shortly - once they have all recovered!