Most of my coxing has been for the Free Press BC, which was associated with the Free Press pub in Cambridge. The landlord of the pub, Chris Lloyd, coached the Lents crew I coxed for Churchill College in 1979, and I coxing for the Free Press BC since then to the late 1990s (although I don't have any pictures of boats that I coxed in the 1980s).
Note: Chris and Debbie Lloyd moved a few years ago from landlording the
Free Press pub to the Cambridge Blue pub -- a great non-smoking
pub! -- and the boat club became the Cambridge Blue BC, and more
recently the XPress BC.
Here I am coxing a Free Press boat in the Town Bumps. I'm not
exactly sure about the date... but, judging by the amount of hair some of my
friends in the crew have, it must be sometime in the early 1990s!
This is my view of a Free Press crew doing a marathon race from
Cambridge to Denver, again sometime in the early 1990s. As can be seen, this
requires the navigation of the locks along the River Cam (the trick is to make
sure the crew don't all pull in their oars at the same time). The stroke
of this boat, nearest the camera, is none other than Chris Lloyd, the
landlord of the Free Press pub, and instigator of the boat club.
But please don't get the impression the Free Press BC is restricted to the events in the immediate locale.
Here is an international adventure with a Free Press veteran IV (in this case of average age over 50, although please note the age of the cox does not count). We are at the World Veteran Championships, held in Miami in 1991.
This is not a very good picture I admit, but its the only one I've got of
this event. It shows me coxing a Free Press veteran VIII on the river
Tiber in Rome in 1992. If you look carefully you can see me at the front of the
boat, as it is a `front loading' eight. It was quite an experience coxing such
a boat for the first time on a river I'd never coxed on before... getting
through the bridges was not straightforward!
Here is a Free Press veteran VIII in the 1999 Vesta Veterans Head of
the River race on Thames.
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