BillaBroad: Punting and Rowing

This term at Oxford is called "Summer Term", and with summertime comes lots of fun. The first Oxford tradition I'm going to talk about is called punting, and it only exists in Cambridge, Oxford, and a few other cities around England. Punts are large boats that fit up to six people. Each punt is equipped with a large metal pole (16ft long), which one person uses to push the boat along from the bottom of the river. To steer, you can use the pole as a rudder, or you can get someone in your boat to paddle, since they also give you a canoe paddle. Here are some punting boats:

Punting is a lot of fun, as long as your punter knows what to do. When pushing off the bottom of the river, it is really easy to push your boat into the bank, which is often covered with brush and sometimes thorns. You can see how people might start getting stressed/angry if the punter can't keep the boat straight. Otherwise, punting is really relaxing and a lot of fun, especially on a warm sunny day (which are very rare even in June). Here are some pictures of my friends and me on the water:

The best part is that punting is absolutely free because St. Anne's pays the boathouse to reserve four punts for us all term!

Another big tradition at Oxford is the rowing culture. This past week was "Summer Eights," which is the culmination of the year for all the college rowing teams. It is pretty incredible - there are over 1000 rowers involved when you include the preliminary races, and on the fourth and final day of racing, thousands come out to watch the competition. At Oxford there are 39 colleges, and they each have (at least) 2 mens and 2 womens teams that compete against the other colleges. The race is different than what you expect - it is not a side-by-side race since they can't fit all of the boats next to each other on the river. Instead, the boats all start in a line, and the goal is to bump the boat in front of you. Once you bump them, the race is over. If you successfully bump the boat in front of you each of the four days of competition, you earn 'blades', which is a big honor. This year, St. Anne's Mens 1 and 2 teams both earned blades for the first time in St. Anne's history!