On Monday 13th May Hereford Rowing Club welcomed 8 English language students who travel each year to the UK to practise their language while engaging in quintessentially british activities. This year, they climbed Snowdon, cooked in a welsh cookery school, climbed Symmonds Yat and rowed with HRC on the River Wye.
Thanks to Chloe Willimont, Mike Price and Clive Stewart
On arrival, Jana the group lead introduced herself and her group to us, and I took them through a brief history of rowing in the UK, Germany and at Hereford, wasting no more time to get into the tank.
Tank training
Our guests were like ducks to water in our indoor tank. Chloe provided instruction, Clive and Mike lead the stroke and I tried to show them what to do from our new dynmaic erg. Lots of fun was had translating English rowing terminology to German
Then to the water
Our ducks discovered that water acts a little differently to concrete. We discovered that the English term Wobbly translated well to Wackelig!
We practise some rigger dips which got them all nervously giggling, and then rowed in 4's and 6's. After a short while we managed to row all 8, and did a couple of turns above and below the club house. They crew showed great skill backing down the boat!
We celebrated on dry land with a debrief around the 8, and a club photo. I've asked them all to join the local rowing club in Chemnitz/Dresden and come back next year to race their German8 in our regatta!
Thanks to (Left to Right) Detlef, Katrin, Suzy, Holger, Jana, Doreen, Rico & Lutz for kindly donating £120 to our Presidents fund which will help our Junior and adaptive/VI squad.