Lent Bumps

This week is Bumps week in Cambridge.  Four days of frenetic rowing on the river which is too narrow for conventional racing, so the college crews race in the idiosyncratic way which (I think) us only used in Oxford & Cambridge.  Those who achieve a bump by catching the boat in front of them pull over to the side of the river and the victors gather leafy branches from the hedgerow with which to bedeck themselves for the journey back to their boathouses.  I decided this year to try for more shots of individual rowers or subsections of crews; out of 22 pictures below, only 2 show the whole boat.  On the whole I find that shots of a complete rowing eight are not satisfactory unless one can get two side by side or one bumping another for real drama.  Sadly there were no bumps in sight whilst I was patrolling this afternoon.  Here are a selection of what I did get:

Striving for the finish

Watching the following crew making up ground

It's tough at the end

To the victors, the spoils

Going down to the start

Going hard for the line

Shooting the railway bridge

Triumph!

First Division ladies going to the start

A red hippo coxing!