By Patricia Carswell
5
66 ratings
The podcast currently has 33 episodes available.
S3 Ep.4 If you heard my interview with Andy Triggs Hodge last year you may remember him talking about the brilliant charity, London Youth Rowing, which does fantastic work changing young people's lives through rowing. I was keen to get one of their coaches on the podcast to talk in a bit more detail about their work. So step forward Lawrence Farquarson.
Lawrence has been a coach at LYR since 2012. In this interview we talk about:
You can find more about London Youth Rowing here
The email for enquiries that Lawrence mentioned is [email protected]
If you'd like to get involved in Race the Thames (and I strongly recommend it), the link is here
Find out more about NJIRC here
S3, Ep 3. As many of you know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018, and had a mastectomy, chemo and immunotherapy, and since then I've been on a bit of a mission to inform people about things they might need to know about the condition. Which is why I was so thrilled when Napoleon Griffin agreed to come on the show. As both a rower and a male breast cancer survivor, Napoleon and I had LOADS to talk about.
You can find Napoleon on Instagram here
We talked about:
Resources
Information about male breast cancer:
Athletes Without Limits - encouraging people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to get involved in sport.
S3, Ep.2 It would have been lovely not to need to do this interview, but sadly our rivers - and the River Wye in particular - are in crisis, and as rowers and river-lovers you ought to know what's going on. So today I'm talking to Charles Watson, founder of charity and campaigning group, River Action UK, to find out what's wrong with our rivers and what we can do about it.
Resources
River Action UK
The Rivercide documentary
The BBC Panorama documentary , The River Pollution Scandal
River Action petition
Petition to ban discharge of raw sewage into watercourses
Find your MP here
Find your local Rivers Trust here
Where to report pollution incidents:
In England: Environment Agency https://www.gov.uk/report-an-environmental-incident
In Wales: Natural Resources Wales https://naturalresources.wales/about-us/contact-us/report-an-environmental-incident/?lang=en
Find your water company here
Find your water company's contact details here
Groups
Rowers United to Save the Planet
The Rivers Trust
Friends of the Lower Wye
Friends of the Upper Wye
Wye Valley AONB
Find them on Twitter!
DEFRA @DEFRAGovUK
Avara Foods @AvaraToods
Tesco @tesco
Sainsburys @sainsburys
Waitrose @waitrose
Marks & Spencer @MarksandSpencer
Morrisons @Morrisons
Asda @asda
Co-Op @coopuk
Aldi @AldiUK
Lidl @LidlGB
River Action UK @RiverActionUK
S3, Ep.1 A very warm welcome back to the podcast for season 3. I'm really delighted to introduce you to Kate Lindgren, my latest guest, who is a member of Peterborough Rowing Club and a passionate sculler. Having lost her sight as a young woman, she only came to rowing later in life but has taken to it with an enthusiasm that can't fail to be infectious. Kate and I talk about:
You can find Kate on Twitter at @kathryn2503
To join my Patreon scheme, head to https://www.patreon.com/girlontheriver
S2, Ep. 6 In all the excitement of the Tokyo Olympics, it's easy to forget about the team supporting the athletes. Behind every medal and record and personal best, there's a huge network of people making sure the athlete performs at their best. Which is why I was so delighted to talk to this week's guest - Wendy Martinson, OBE - who is the lead nutritionist for the GB Rowing Team.
Having started her career in the NHS, Wendy soon moved into sports nutrition and has worked with athletes across a number of disciplines including gymnastics, hockey and ballet. At the time of recording, Wendy is out in Tokyo with the rowing team, where she has to make sure each athlete is properly fuelled for each race.
In our interview we discuss:
Wendy also asked some questions from listeners:
Resources
Books:
Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food
Anita Bean's cookery books and books on sports nutrition (including for vegetarians)
Performance nutrition by Kevin Currell
Food websites:
BBC Food website
S2 Episode 5 Camilla Hadland has a voice that many of you will recognise. Having started rowing as a junior at a small club, she won a place in the U23 Women’s 8 and competed at the World Junior Championships in 2010, where they won Britain's first ever women’s gold medal at that event. After university, where she was President of her university boat club, she stopped rowing regularly and moved over into coaching.
Camilla fell into commentating, but soon found herself in demand. In 2018 she won World Rowing’s first ever commentating competition and achieved a spot commentating at the World Cup in Serbia. Since then she’s regularly commentated at international events and is part of the commentary team at the Tokyo Olympics. Having done a couple of stints commentating at my club regatta, I was fascinated to hear all about her experiences and to glean some wisdom from her.
We talked about:
Let me know if you're inspired to have a go at commentating or to take your experiences of it to a new level. You can find me at @girlontheriver on all channels or by emailing me at [email protected].
As soon as I heard about Row to Recovery I knew I wanted to talk to Robin Winkels, who founded it. Robin is a rower who, as a result of one phone call in 2014, ended up founding a charity that provides rowing for people who are undergoing or have had treatment for cancer. It's a subject close to Robin's heart after several members of her family had cancer, and she loves seeing the positive impact that rowing has on the participants. Here's what we talked about:
Resources
Find out more about Row to Recovery here.
Click here for their Facebook page. Go to @rowtorecoverygalway to find them on Instagram.
Check out these links to find out more about the benefits of exercise following a diagnosis of cancer, at all stages of treatment and afterwards:
Exercise guidelines for cancer survivors: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31626055/
Impact of exercise on mortality, recurrence and side effects of treatment: https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/39/1/71/3760392#114725911
Guardian article about the benefits of exercise for cancer patients: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/07/cancer-if-exercise-was-a-pill-it-would-be-prescribed-to-every-patient
This episode is one that was especially thrilling to make, as it was the first one I actually recorded face to face – out in the open, hence the background sound of the river rushing by and the birds singing. Which is really appropriate as my guest, Angela Jones, spends almost as much time in the river as on dry land. Angela is a wild swimming specialist, a fitness instructor, a traveller, an adventurer and now an author. She has swum without a wetsuit amongst icebergs in Iceland, kayaked, swum and run the length of the river Wye and from coast to coast in Scotland. She’s also won international triathlon events, though she tells me she’s never been motivated by competition, and feels at her happiest in and around the river – and in particular the beautiful river Wye. “The river Wye flows through my veins and is my office and my playground,” she says.
In this episode Angela and I chat about her love of the river and wild swimming. She tells me about the worrying deterioration in the health of the river that she has noticed and logged over the years, and we talk about what we can do to make a difference and save our rivers. We discuss her appearance on a Panorama documentary about discharges of raw sewage into the river and finally she tells me about her wonderful new book, Wild Swimming the River Wye.
Resources
You can find out more about Angela here.
To buy her fabulous book, Wild Swimming the River Wye click here.
Sign the petition Angela refers to here.
Watch the Panorama documentary on the river pollution scandal here.
Find more resources for saving our rivers on my website, here.
And watch us swimming together in the river here (and why not subscribe to my YouTube channel while you're there?!)
S2 Ep.1 Welcome back to Girl on the River for Season 2 – it’s so good to be back!
I’m absolutely thrilled to bring you the first episode in my new season – an interview with Adrian Ellison, who coxed the 4+ to a gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles (the first of five gold medals for crew member Steve Redgrave).
Adrian is a brilliant fount of knowledge, and what he doesn’t know about coxing isn’t worth knowing. We had a tremendous chat (the uncut version of which is available to Girl on the River patrons – you can sign up for the Girl Squad at www.patreon.com/girlontheriver).
Here’s what we talked about:
If you fancy joining one of Adrian’s Zoom Ergos sessions you can sign up at www.zoomergos.com.
The podcast currently has 33 episodes available.