17 February 2025

By Tim Koch

Tim Koch finally finds out where he can get most of the answers.

A recent trawl through some of my unpublished photographs produced the picture of a poem of 1959 reproduced above. It tells of a group of elderly oarsmen who have acquired the wisdom of age (not something that is always done) and who encounter few things in rowing that they have not seen, experienced or analysed before. 

I particularly like the lines:

For Remenham know most of the answers 
As the Summer’s song is sung – 
When the young believe they will never grow old, 
And the old once again are young.

Importantly, these men are not “bar stool bores”, their advice and opinions are not strident and they are philosophical in defeat. Further, this is not a poem by a curmudgeonly sixty-year-old man that simply praises the old and dismisses the young. The final lines admits that even the Wise Old Men of Remenham Club are fallible and, if ever proven so, they will accept their mistakes with humility.

While many HTBS Types will not need telling, I should make it clear what Remenham Club is and who Gully Nickalls was.

Remenham Club is sometimes described as “a rowing club without boats” but it is more accurate to call it “a social club for rowers.” It was founded in 1909 “with the definite object of strengthening the membership and resources of Metropolitan Clubs by consolidating their oarsmen and giving them a common meeting place at Henley.”

Remenham was originally open to any member of an Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) affiliated rowing club but, in 1947, membership was restricted to members of the founding clubs (London Thames, Twickenham, Molesey, Kingston, Staines and, since 1947, Vesta). Those wishing to join must have raced competitively for a period of years with their founding club, won enough status points, and displayed sufficient proficiency in oarsmanship to qualify.

The delightful clubhouse is sited halfway down the Henley course. It is fronted by “the mound”, a raised piece of ground which allows members a good view of the racing and to be able to look down on (perhaps in more ways than one) the crowds passing along the towpath. 

The end of the races cannot be seen from Remenham but it does have a couple of possible advantages over the finish line based Stewards’ Enclosure. Unlike Stewards’, here you can watch rowing and drink at the same time and, also unlike Stewards’, all of the members of Remenham have a genuine interest in, and connection with, rowing. This is best demonstrated by the “Remenham Roar,” which comes from the crowd on the mound when two of the founding clubs race past. The Roar is fiercest when arch rivals London and Thames are involved.

Guy Oliver Nickalls (1899 – 1974) was, on both his mother’s and father’s side, from famous rowing stock. He was the son of the fabulously successful rower, Guy Nickalls, and of Ellen Gilbey Gold, sister of Sir Harcourt Gold, sometime Henley and ARA Chairman. His grandfather was Tom Nickalls, one of the founding members of London Rowing Club.

In the 1920s, Gully rowed in two Olympic Games, three Oxford Boat Race crews and won four Henley medals. Later, he was a Steward Of Henley Royal Regatta and, in the 1950s, Chairman of the Amateur Rowing Association in the period when the ARA formally ended the division between gentlemen and tradesmen amateurs.

In his autobiography, A Rainbow in the Sky, Reminiscences by G.O. “Gully” Nickalls (Chatto and Windus, 1974), Nickalls wrote:

…I derived the utmost joy from my rowing. Not in any masochistic sense but in so many positive ways. The assuaging of a burning thirst; the satisfying of a giant appetite; the comfortable tiredness that presages a good night’s sleep; the camaraderie of friends all set on the same objective. These things I loved. Then there was the wonderful feeling of fitness, the unleashing of a strength that seemed boundless, and those wonderful days when the crew’s improved technique brought a glorious response in the run and pace of the boat…Those were moments that brought such rich rewards. Sometimes it would seem almost as though the boat were a live thing which with its own particular brand of joie de vivre, was joining in the frolic by skidding through the water of its own accord. Merely to glimpse these delights is something that makes rowing so very, very worthwhile.

I am sure that anyone who has ever put any time and effort into rowing and has “glimpsed these delights” will agree with Gully’s words. Clearly, he too was one of the Wise Old Men of Remenham Club.