This update has been brought to you by Ellie Coles ’17 who is the varsity eight coxswain. After Henley she’ll put her double major in Chemistry and Archeology to work “hunting for dinosaurs”.

The team made its final move of the trip from Nettlebed into houses in town after our last breakfast with Charlotte and Jay, which you will never believe was not porridge. We were treated the “Big Boy Breakfast” (a full and proper English breakfast).  We are now dispersed in four different houses all on Queen Street, a five minute walk over the bridge to the boat tent. The 8+ is split into two houses, I am living with the stern 4, the 4+ has its own house, and Frank, Sarah, Mike, and Sean are sharing a house.  Each house has slightly different rules and quirks, but we are all grateful to our gracious hosts.

After moving in in the morning, everyone took some time to get settled, and then we took a trip to the grocery store as we will now not have the luxury of Charlotte’s, our host in Nettlebed, wonderful cooking. Each house had a slightly different strategy when planning meals, but all came away from the grocery store pleased. [editors note: the best strategy was the house that returned to the van with an exploding shopping cart, but not a single plastic bag; they did avoid the 5 pence charge/bag, however it is still yet to be determined what items are rolling around under the seats in the van now.]

In the afternoon we went out on the water for a session. We did several practice starts (a few in each “station” or lane of the course). This was helpful for the guys to practice coming off the line with intensity, and was also immensely helpful for me as it gave me several opportunities to practice my steering off the line. We finished off practice with a little bit of aerobic base work.

Following practice we all returned to our respective homes and cleaned up and cooked ourselves dinner. My house made ourselves a pasta dish with meat sauce and spinach. After dinner we meet up with the bow 4 from the 8+ and went out for dessert before settling in for the night.

---

If you’d like to see more of our adventure, you can also follow our travels on twitter (@VirginiaRowing) and instagram (@vmensrowing).