Come to learn how to row on the best and most beautiful stretch of the River Thames!
We can promise that you will learn new skills and get fitter, we can ensure that you will have fun, and we hope that you may even fall in love with the sport enough to want to take it up seriously afterwards. Wallingford Rowing Club, has launched both Junior and Adult Learn to row courses for the upcoming summer.
To find out more please visit our Learn To Row page.
Firstly, our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the UTRC masters rower who sadly died following a suspected heart attack at this Head race. It is a tragic reminder that health and safety must be taken seriously at all times for rowers of all ages, during events and training.
The organisers decided not to cancel the race and we saw some great Wallingford performances. Top must be the win by 16 seconds in W4- by Sam Burrows, Ruth Haigh, Lucy Walker and Emma Butler. They beat a strong field of 10 crews, storming through to the finish in a superb line near the spectators on the bank. I think it made coach Keith Settles’s day!
It’s good to see our senior women regularly beating the local clubs and coming back with medals – they are definitely on an upwards curve, following a great training programme. Also winning were our WMasF 4x of Alice Brown, Julia Wilks, Jenny Taylor and Rachel Edge, our MasE 4- of Mike Edge, Dick Smith, Pete King and Steve Pearson, and our J15 4x+ of Rohan Clark, Ben Philipps, Fergus Caulfield, Harry Ireland and cox Orla McNulty who beat a very decent Marlow crew by just 6 seconds, and eight others.
Way to go Wallingford!
Our juniors won three events at Wycliffe Big Head on Saturday 4th February. In lovely conditions, and surprisingly warm for Wycliffe, our J16 4+ beat their nearest opposition by 26 secs, and our WJ16 8+ (pictured with medals) beat theirs by 41 seconds.
The boys, including a J15, looked strong at half-way and continued to power away from the other crews towards the finish line. The girls had their best ever row in an 8, a very exciting step-up for these athletes who were a mix of last year’s National Schools Champions in the 4+, a new recruit and some WJ15s.
Most impressive of all however was our J14 4x+ who beat six other crews by over a minute! This continues a very promising start for this squad who have now come away with two gold medals from their first two races.
Inspired by Keith Settle, our Director of Senior Rowing, thirty-nine members of the Club smashed a Christmas challenge to rack up the approx.
2,500 kilometres between Wallingford and Kyiv. In total we rowed, erged, swam, biked (distance divided by three!), ran or walked 3,213,393 metres from 19th December to 1st January to raise money for the British Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal, helping to provide essential emergency support, food, water, medical care and shelter for those affected by the war.
£360 has been donated so far. This is an outstanding achievement with the additional benefit of keeping everyone fit, ready to begin club training again for the winter and spring heads. Well done everyone!
Many congratulations to Wallingford RC sculler and club committee member Chris Revell who won the overall headship at Walton SBH last weekend.
Chris beat all other single scullers, winning Open Sculls in a time of 11.22.8. Fellow sculler Sam Chard came 3rd in a time of 11.30.5, getting ever closer to his Wallingford rival. Must be all those club pieces you are doing together on Sunday mornings, chaps!
Andy Hull, Wallingford RC Treasurer, won MasC single sculls too, in a time of 11.56.0, making it possibly the most successful race for our committee for at least a few years…
WRC took 32 junior crews to Wycliffe Small Boats Head in Gloucestershire and 12 junior crews to Hampton Small Boats Head on the same day, using both trailers and just about every volunteer we could muster. Wycliffe was our J14s first ever race.
They did the club proud, Tom Debney and Arthur Liddy winning J14 2x, with the J14 4x+ finishing as the fastest J14 quad but unfortunately in the J15 category due to entry limits imposed by the organisers. Lots of fun in good though chilly conditions, and a huge congratulations to their coach Henry White who is bringing on the squad very nicely.
Ewan Sleep also won in J18 1x as did the J16 4+ of Toby Edmonds, Toby Mould, Dylan Peters, Jacob Gunn and cox Herbie Potts. At Hampton, Niamh McAdden and Zara Richardson won WJ17 2x (beating 23 other doubles from a hugely competitive field) on a day when fingers were really just sorry appendages to raw, numb hands.
A brilliant club effort saw a really well organised Head partly ruined by the dastardly rain – by the time Division 1 was raced the river had risen from yellow to red boards meaning that Division 2 had to be cancelled.
Still there was some hotly contested racing in conditions that, apart from the stream, were actually very good. Wallingford RC had one winner, our outstanding Womens Masters E 8+ of Alice Brown, Janet Dutton, Karen Walker, Rachel Edge, Katie Guyatt, Jenny Taylor, Laura Forrest, Becky Waller, cox Georgia Dowdeswell who beat off younger competition to win by well over one minute.
Our afternoon crews’ attempts at victory were foiled by the high water! Many thanks and congratulations to the Events Committee and the many volunteers who made this the exceptional Head race that so many clubs enjoy at the onset of winter.
We had some superb results at the weekend’s Fours Heads on the Tideway. On Sunday, our Women Masters C 4+ of Emily Booker, Emma Butler, Lou Wymer, Sam Hammond and cox Rachael Haycock won their class by well over a minute and were the second fastest sweep-oared women’s crew on the day, beating all but one of the A coxless fours!
Our mixed 4+ of Becky Waller, Sally Axon, Mike Drury, John Wiggins and cox Jasper Tidmarsh rowed in the men’s F category and won that by 11 seconds, beating all the men-only crews. That is an awesome result.
At the Fours Head the day before our Women’s Club 4+ came a very creditable 11th out of 29 entries, and our Men’s Club 4+ came 22nd out of 29. Our coaching and training programme under Keith Settle continues to pay dividends!
This week has seen two amazing fundraisers for the club. Tara and Pat Mead, Ruth Peters, Susie Coleman, Emma Richardson and Judy Collins (all parents of current Juniors) and Katie Guyatt (from our Masters’ squad) helped at the annual Wallingford Bonfire and Fireworks spectacle, selling sparklers and glow sticks, and collecting donations on behalf of the organisers, local charity 1155.
Then Ruth organised a comedy evening for Juniors’ parents, especially the newest cohort of J14 parents, with cheese and wine at Centre 70 in Wallingford, which involved many laughs and by the looks of it singing from our very own coach, David Gauden… Both events raised a significant amount of money for the club, for which we are incredibly grateful. Thank you to all involved!
As you all probably know, the Wallingford Juniors organised a 24-hour sponsored erg in May this year, raising an incredible £14,000 to be shared equally between Ukrainian charities and the boat club.
£5,000 of that money was donated to MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres), and £2,000 to DEC (Disasters and Emergencies Committee.) We have just received a lovely thank you letter from MSF describing how they have used our donation.
They set up a medical transfer train to evacuate sick and injured civilians from the eastern regions of Ukraine to relatively safe hospitals in Lviv, in the west. Some of the patients transported in this way have included a child with big, open fractures to his legs, and a woman with blast injuries to her face, who had lost her right eye.
The child was desperate to walk again, the woman to have surgery so she could look “beautiful” again for her husband and child. MSF have said that without donations such as ours, these and many other people could not have received treatment, facing a life with significant disabilities, or even in some cases, death.
It’s good to know that we have made a difference. Well done again the Juniors on your phenomenal efforts!
Wallingford Rowing Club 