Race report – CRA Bumps, July 2026

Major achievement for Ely: this year we fielded three crews across the men’s, women’s and for the first time ever, juniors’ squads. The Cambridge Town Bumps is an epic event requiring an enormous amount of volunteering hours and organisational skill, and we are very grateful to everyone at the Cambridge Rowing Association for the opportunity to participate!

Junior squad:

Because this year IOERC was developing a relatively novice men’s squad, our mixed juniors (ranging from WJ15 to OJ18) took the place of M1 in Division 3, racing against some very well established opposition. With typical good humour, the juniors rose to this challenge admirably, throughout water- and land-training sessions and also during the evenings of bumps themselves. We are indebted to the wonderful Iphigenie T from CUBC who agreed to be their cox; Iphigenie not only steered with technical excellence, but also professionally mentored the squad into giving their all during the races. The crew succumbed to three bumps on the first three nights (one of which was due to a safe emergency stop to avoid a collision with two stationary boats up ahead; well done Iphigenie for keeping our juniors safe!). The crew never lost their fighting spirit, and on the final night they showed true grit in securing a feisty rowover, being chased by “Hard Pressed” a crew from XPress and leaving them in the dust!

As always, our junior squad is the jewel in our crown and we’re incredibly proud of how they applied themselves during their first ever bumps week. Their camaraderie and team spirit is an inspiration to us all!

Men’s squad:

There’s only one word for it, “BLADES”!

It’s that magical word that every bumps participant wants to hear. Some people allege that you should never even mention the word before it happens, for fear of jinxing it! But this year, it did happen: the men won their blades in Division 4 by showing true determination and swift development in skill and strength over the training season.

They bumped Champs 8 in 300 m on the first night, City 16 in 300m on the second night, City 15 by 300m on the third night, and then showed a strong fighting spirit on the last night making a bump on Chesterton 4 in 500m just before the 1st Post on the final night. Their wonderful cox Jaqui kept up their excitement and energy levels throughout, and some annihilated bow balls tell the story of determination, power and brute force! Jaqui received a dunking in recognition of her efforts – luckily legs-only, to mirror Patrick’s painful but effective drills – we can’t risk water-borne disease in our celebrated cox extraordinaire. The squad went on to eat, drink and make merry … and to start dreaming of that beautiful trophy blade in pride of place on the wall.

This was a huge achievement by the IOERC men which will inspire this relatively novice squad to train hard and keep up their successful streak!

Women’s squad:

This year, the crew started and finished in position 14 in Division 1. It took a huge amount of determination to hold our position this year. We give a big shout-out to our worthy adversaries from neighbouring clubs; we could see how much effort they also have put in this year, and everyone’s hard work resulted in some very intense races! We were being chased down by Cantabs 5 (night 1),  Cantabs 5 (night 2), Cantabs 5  (night 3) and City 6 (night 4), and chasing City 5 on the 1st night and every night after the Chesterton W1 crew. Each night, we rowed over, neither bumping nor being bumped. Truly exhausting but exhilarating type-2 fun!

We were lucky enough to be joined by our Cambridge cox Isabel Nimmo (Cantabs), whose knowledge and experience always makes our crew row better. Thank you, Isabel, for contributing your strength and courage to our clan!

For a small community club, with a fully masters (MasB-F!) W1 crew, we’re glad that we managed to hold our heads high and achieve four strong rowovers in the first division. Rowing is an ultra test of physical and mental resilience – and this week tested us for sure!

We were so lucky, and very grateful, to have fantastic support from so many of our members and their families who lined the banks at Osier’s Holt, Grassy Corner and the Plough and kept us all going when things got tough.

Thanks to Patrick and Duncan who faithfully supported all three crews as bank party, with help from Ali and Grace.

Special thanks to the extraordinary members who volunteered to act as position marshalls on Stourbridge Common, without their support we could not have taken part.

Race report: Liz Roberts, with bumps-checking by Duncan McCulloch

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