I am definitely not a morning person, I never have been and I can say for a fact I NEVER WILL BE a morning person. So you may well ask ‘why was I standing at the entrance of Southampton Solent’s library waiting for a coach at 5.30am on a freezing Saturday morning in December?’ The answer is:…I was off to my first rowing competition for Southampton Solent’s rowing club and I’m loving every minute of it!!!! Here is a little summary…
A tired-looking, but obviously raring to go rowing team made their way down to the University of Bristol Boat Club (UBBC) (situated on the outskirts of Bath) and arrived at 6.45am. The sun was just rising and the location is absolutely idyllic (all shots taken on my Samsung Mini Galaxy S5 phone camera).
The UBBC’s clubhouse was opened on 27 September 2014 and it is the best I have seen (after Henley’s Rowing Club) – it is extremely big and by big I mean huge!.
When we arrived, we assembled the boats and then I had a stroll around the club’s grounds. My images above really don’t portray what a beautiful morning it was. I didn’t have my DSLR and really regret not taking it. I’m always worried that the camera will get broken/stolen when left unattended. I must get over this feeling – it is insured and I want to seize every moment I can taking to improve my photography.
I watched some races and it was then our turn, the Fresher’s Eight, to row up towards to the start line. It was quite a tense time and it was excruciatingly cold (the temperature never really got up over freezing). We were left in a holding position for nearly 2 hours and every part of my body went numb. Then we were off! We came 11th out of 14 but as we had only rowed together twice and that number included the actual race, our coach was really pleased.
I loved the entire day and was thoroughly exhausted when I finally arrived home at 10pm.
Visual Exploration 