News & Events
Captain' Log: Issue 21
22nd September 2022
Hello Cygnets, this is your Captain speaking,
The Season is now well underway with our squad meeting quickly followed by Scullers Head and weekend outings to get us afloat in earnest.Pleased to be building momentum as the long evenings (and longer ergs) of Heads Session set in...
I look forward to seeing a very many of you this weekend for the Centenary Ball at Richmond Hill Hotel - huge efforts going in by the organising committee (to which we owe huge thanks), it promises to be a splendid dinner and dance and I look forward to seeing you all in your Black Tie finery and an opportunity to catch up with reunited Cygnet friends.
Scullers Head
Huge congratulations to our four racing Cygnets this weekend Pete, Cris, Charlie and Chairman Nick who represented Cygnet in beautiful weather (if not-so-beautiful-water) and did Cygnet proud. Pleased to see the Heads racing season get off to such a strong start.Scullers Head, Cygnet Results
207 • Club • P Goldsworthy • 25:13.78 • 251st
209 • Club • C Piguet • 25:41.35 • 295th
396 • Masters Novice • C Pretzlik • 26:52.17 • 365th
365 • Masters H • N Wylie • 27:36.17 • 403rd
A big thank you too, to all the helpers who assisted with hosting and boating this weekend - as you know these races couldn't happen without you. Next up is Pairs Head Sunday 2nd October – please sign up to lend a hand, with a number of Cygnets back racing on the Rhine, any folks staying local who can help and lend a hand with boating and traffic will be very much appreciated.
The Season Ahead: Squad Training Plan.
A big thank you to all members of the Squad who joined last Thursday's Squad kick-off meeting to meet with the Captaincy and Coaching team to discuss our plans for training and racing during Heads season. You'll find a summary of this here (pdf) and in the clubhouse changing rooms, we really want to make the most of the platform we built last season and step up our training and performance over the coming season. Please take some time to digest the plan and how we plan to approach the coming year. It also sets out the racing schedule and training sessions - also all available on Fitclub. Land training will be a premium with the shed sessions in high demand from Cygnet and BBL - please do make the most of these sessions and the training on offer.
Learn To Row: Spread the Word – 9th October
We will be launching our Learn to Row Sunday 9 October, please spread the word far and wide, we are very keen for a healthy intake this autumn so please to share across your local and professional networks as we look to grow the club and build Cygnet momentum. Please contact Henrik / see the attached for more details
Committee Vacancies
We are looking to fill two crucial vacancies on the Cygnet Committee - Secretary and Social Secretary, please get in touch if you think you might be interested and able to help with the running of the club and our social scene. Two pivotal roles that help keep the club running in some form or other: Volunteers urgently needed.
Racing Calendar2022
- 17th September: Scullers Head – Tideway
- 1st October: Rhine Marathon – Düsseldorf, Germany
- 2nd October: Pairs Head
- 30th October: Upper Thames Autumn Head – Henley
- 19th November: Fours Head – Tideway
- 20th November: Vets Fours Head – Tideway
2023
- 29th January: Quintin Head – Tideway
- 26th February: Hammersmith Head – Tideway
- 18th March: Eights Head of the River (HORR) – Tideway
- 19th March: Vets Eights Head of the River – Tideway
Off-Season: Monday 20th March – Monday 10th April
Ronnie Lambe
14th September 2022
Ronald Edwin Lambe
1925 – 2022
‘Ronnie’ Lambe, who died at the age of 97 on 30th August 2022, had been a member of Cygnet Rowing Club for 75 years. Almost certainly the longest standing member of the club to date, he was also the last surviving link with ‘Wally’ Wheldal, the most memorable of the club’s founding fathers, whom he recalled meeting in person in the late 1940s.
Ronald Edwin Lambe was born into a large family on 7th May 1925. The family was originally from the East End but had upped sticks and moved to Walthamstow by the time Ronnie appeared on the scene. These were harsh times: the country was still coming to terms with the aftermath of the Great War and some of his earliest memories were of his father and uncles relating tales of their battle-weary times in France. “They lived most of their lives in mud and shit, but their recollections were not unhappy ones”.
His father was a successful insurance agent and the family moved around a lot, eventually settling in Putney where Ronnie went to Elliott Central School, a seat of learning that catered for “moderately bright young men who had not quite managed to gain a scholarship”. Ronnie always maintained that the school’s chief task was to mould boys into “clerks for the City, who were content to touch their caps and be nice to their masters as long as they got paid reasonably well”.
Upon leaving school in 1943, Ronnie went straight into the Royal Navy where he served for three years. To his eternal regret he never went to sea which may perhaps explain why he jumped at the opportunity to join Cygnet RC, having been invited to do so by his old school chum Vic Reeves. Messrs Reeves and Lambe were duly elected as new members on 16th August 1947, he under the happy impression a sparkling career as a club oarsman beckoned. In truth, and as Vic Reeves confessed some 60 years later, they had only ever intended him to be a coxswain, a role that he accepted with his customary equanimity.
In 2005, Ronnie penned some of his memories of those early post-war years: “Many members were returning from the armed forces which tended to engender a rather relaxed air in contrast to the enforced discipline they had become accustomed to.” Beer drinking was popular – Jenner’s Golden Ale was the chosen tipple – and Ronnie recalled the huge consternation that greeted the submersion of the club bar in the floods of 1953. Still, there were ‘pots’ to be had and Ronnie shared in the club’s haul of silverware throughout the heady days of the 1950s.
An astute observer of his surroundings, Ronnie recalled that “The river was rather different in those days. Not only was it very dirty, but there was a considerable amount of commercial traffic – mainly tugs pulling eight to nine barges loaded with coal up to the old Brentford gas works”. Nonetheless, “we still sometimes swam at the top of the tide through Barnes Bridge and back”. Small Profit Dock, opposite the boathouse on the Surrey side, was still in occasional commercial use and “it was…. there that I, as cox, put a brand new eight aground on its first outing”. Plus ςa change!
Despite his long tenure at Cygnet, Ronnie was never a civil servant. However, as an employee of a nationalized industry, he always considered himself to be one. Having been ‘demobbed’ in 1946, he initially became a vacuum cleaner vendor before taking up a clerical post at British Gas primarily because it was close to home, and he needed a stop gap until something better came along. He never left, serving 40 years as a “gas employee”; yet in all those years he never seems to have been tempted to join Horseferry, the gas board’s counterpart to Cygnet.
The Civil Service Boathouse has always been a marriage bureau first and a rowing club second and Ronnie duly married St George’s lass Anne Crewdson in 1960. Procreation followed: Stephen was first on the scene, then twins Philip and Rosemary. Thereafter, Ronnie’s active rowing days were few and far between. Nonetheless, while he may have vacated the coxswain’s seat, he never relinquished his quill.
A natural bureaucrat, he amply fulfilled the aspirations of Elliott Central, performing secretarial duties at Cygnet, the Civil Service Boathouse Executive, Putney Town and Borne at Chiswick regattas, Ranelagh Sailing Club, ‘Cygnets’ bungalow committee and the Hamhaugh Islanders’ Association among others. At times he must have felt his very sanity was on the line: Marjorie Israel, his successor as Secretary at Cygnet, recalls a classic occasion when he found himself writing a letter to himself at the CSBE from himself as club secretary. Nonetheless, he stayed the course as club secretary for almost two decades, while his association with Putney Town Regatta extended over half a century.
A safe pair of hands (and an obvious choice as a club trustee), Ronnie steered Cygnet through some turbulent times, not least the ultimately abortive negotiations for a merger with BBLRC. Yet he always remained above the fray and enthusiastically embraced the age of the word processor. Neil Pickford recalls that in later years he attracted the (affectionate) nickname of the ‘The Lambinator’ amongst the younger, active members of Cygnet and BBLRC, a pun born out of his predilection for creating laminated signs for the boathouse at every opportunity.
Among his contemporaries, Ronnie was unusual in escaping the clutches of the Golden Oldies and he rarely imbibed with them at the Boathouse on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon. Still, he was never above having a good time. Family gatherings on Hamhaugh Island were common, while he and Vic Reeves were instrumental in founding the ‘veterans’ lunch at Henley which became the Leander lunch.
Bungalow committee meeting lunches at ‘Cygnets’ held a special attraction in latter times with all the great and the good – Peter Sly, Vic Reeves, Mike Arnold-Gilliat and Nina Padwick to name but a few – in attendance. Very much the gourmet, these occasions lent themselves to all sorts of Lambe culinary delights. His meat pies at Borne Regatta were legendary.
For many of us, one of our last memories of Ronnie will have been of him wearing his stripy club blazer at Old Blades on Henley Friday. In 2009, Ronnie sat down with Vic Reeves and recorded a Talking History looking back over a lifetime at Cygnet Rowing Club. At the close of that recording he reflected that “joining Cygnet was a major action in my life and a source of the greatest pleasure”. Anne predeceased him in 2009; he is survived by Stephen, Philip and Rosemary, five grandchildren, and a wealth of committee minute books.
Ronnie’s funeral will be held on Friday, 23 September at 10.30am at Guildford Crematorium and afterwards at Philip and Viven’s home, 13 Hamhaugh Island. Please contact the Secretary if you plan to attend the reception.
Paul Rawkins, September 2022
Captain's Log: Preparing the Season Ahead
12th September 2022
The 2022/23 Season
After several quiet weeks on the rowing front since marking the end of the 2022 Regatta Season and my re-election as Captain, I am pleased to announce the final preparations for the forthcoming 2022/23 season, along with the new Captaincy Team: Deputy Captain Matthew Gutteridge, Vice Captain Henrik Jonstromer.
The Squad, together with Coach Beth and the Captaincy Team, will meet at 1900 on Thursday 15th September at the Club to kick the season off and present our training and racing plans for the forthcoming Heads Season. Please join us and pass the message on to any who may wish to join.
Land training sessions resume from Wednesday 14th – details/sign up on Fitclub.
Finally, a heartfelt thanks from me to all who have wished Samantha and I well and for our wedding on 27 August, we have enjoyed some wonderful celebrations and a very relaxing honeymoon but both very much looking forward to our return to rowing and getting back in our respective boats! Thanks to you all for the best wishes and kind messages.
Look forward to seeing many of you on Thursday and many more of you at the Centenary Ball on the 24th.
Best wishes
Rupert
