Henley Royal Regatta Chauffeur

Sit back and let us row

First Class, luxury chauffeur driven travel to all the major rowing events in England including Henley Royal Regatta and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.

Henley Royal Regatta

Unlike multi-lane international regattas, Henley still operates a knock-out draw with only two boats racing in each heat. This entails the organization of up to 100 races on some of the five days. To complete the programme by a reasonable hour, races are started at 5-minute intervals.

The length of the Course is 1 mile 550 yards, which is 112 meters longer than the standard international distance of 2,000 meters. It takes approximately seven minutes to cover, so that there are often two races at once on the Course for much of the day. The number of races is, of course, reduced on each successive day, leaving only the Finals to be rowed on the last day.

There are 19 events in total: 6 classes of race for Eights, 5 for Fours (3 coxless and 2 coxed), 4 for Quadruple Sculls, and races for Coxless Pairs and Double Sculls. In addition there are single sculling races for both men and women. 1993 was the first year women competed over the Course in a full Regatta event when a new event for women single scullers was inaugurated. In 2000 an open event for Women’s Eights was introduced, whilst in 2001 there were new events for Women’s and Men’s Quadruple Sculls.

In 2004 there were significant changes to the Coxed Fours events. The top event, the Prince Philip Challenge Cup, was withdrawn due to declining interest internationally. There are now two events at the lower level - the Britannia Challenge Cup, restricted to just club crews, and a new event for student crews, the Prince Albert Challenge Cup.

Recent years have seen entries of international quality from Australia, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Poland, the Netherlands, the U.S.A., Germany, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, South Africa, Slovenia, Greece, Bulgaria, New Zealand and Great Britain. Every year Henley is visited by many crews from abroad and last year 98 crews were from overseas.

Oxford and Cambridge boat race

The idea for a rowing race between the universities came from two friends - Charles Merivale, a student at Cambridge, and his Harrow school friend Charles Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth), who was at Oxford.
On 12 March 1829, Cambridge sent a challenge to Oxford and thus the tradition was born which has continued to the present day, where the loser of the previous year’s race challenges the opposition to a re-match.
The first Boat Race took place at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire and contemporary newspapers report crowds of twenty thousand traveled to watch. The race was stopped soon after the start and, following the restart, Oxford were clear winners. The event was such a resounding success that the townspeople later decided to organize a regatta of their own which duly became Henley Royal Regatta. After the first year, the early Boat Races took place at Westminster in London, but by 1845, when Westminster had become too crowded, the Boat Race moved six miles up-stream to the then country village of Putney. In 1856 the race became an annual event.

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