Where everybody looks like Chaswick.....

We did it and made it to Regatta at Henley on Thames yesterday. What a spectacle. Basically, a quaint little town on the Thames river in the countryside south of Oxford is descended upon by rowing teams from around the world. We saw the Harvard boys, and Georgetown, alongside Cambridge, etc. etc.



The funny part is that it is really fancy event. Most of the people wear ties and jackets in school colors, and the women wear big British hats with feathers and below the knees dresses. Then, if you are connected or pay the pounds to get connected, you can get into the "Stewards Enclosures", or private bar tents along the river. We were not connected, so we sat with the "public" on the grass banks and drank beer out of paper cups! Brilliant!



The other crazy thing was the tailgaters that were going on in the parking lot, which was a perfectly manicured grass lawn mowed short and striped. My picture doesn't capture it, but the tailgates consisted of groups of people sitting around tableclothed and crystaled tables, with full food, wine, champagne and dessert bars around them, and whitegloved waitstaffs tending to the people. Hmm....



And then the clothes that the guys were wearing. Check out the guy over Lori's shoulder. Very typical dress for the event. Notice that he is fancied up in his white suit and hat, but is wearing knee high mud boots.... I say old chap!



And then the races...ah yes. We didn't know what was going on, but every once in a while you would hear cheering coming up the river bank toward you and everyone would put down their drinks for a minute and start yelling for the local team, which would go charging up river, into the stiff wind, with a huge umpires boat full of very proper looking gents watching from behind. Then once passed, back to drinking champagne. ;)



After all the excitement there, it looked like rain was going to hammer us so we high tailed it up to the town to walk about a bit. Very cool place, but we couldn't spend too much time as we had an hour and half bus ride to take to get back to Magpie Cottage and the girls were getting tired. We'll definitely come back to Henley before we leave. Netty and Johnathan are partying in the enclosure at Regatta this weekend for their anniversary. It was either that, or Metallica in Wembley. They chose Regatta, which I can't blame since Metallica has gone all sissy. ;)



Today we are getting ready to head off to Kent to get into position for the Tour de France to roll through. Itinerary still up in the air, but we are definitely going to Leeds Castle today. Hoping the weather breaks and we can run the girls through the extensive gardens there. I will be back blogging in 3 days, recapping our Kent adventure.....

Cheerio! whatever...