Adaptive Rowing Clubs

Where can I row?

For starters, it’s always worth trying your most local club. While they might not have an established adaptive programme, it might be that they have received enquiries and your enquiry might be the spur that gets them to get some resources together. Sometimes clubs have individuals who have expressed interest in supporting adaptive rowing, but no programme is in place because there were no athletes. Marlow RC’s adaptive programme is one of the biggest in the country, but it started with a single rower (Ben Marsden) who I worked with 1:1 for close to a year until others started to join and we found other kit we could use.

Still, if you are looking for an established adaptive programme, I thought I would produce this directory (which I will keep up to date as I find about new programmes, cancelled programmes or other updates – please comment below or drop me a line if you know of any).

The British Rowing website also has a directory of rowing clubs, but unfortunately, the site is not very easy to use especially for finding an adaptive club.  First, the “Finding a Rowing Club” page doesn’t have a filter for Adaptive Rowing offered.  The individual club profile do have the option for ticking the “Adaptive Rowing” box, but when I contacted every one of them, half did not respond at all and all of those that didn’t respond (hence left off my list below) had no mention of adaptive rowing on their website.  Finally, if you do a brute force text search on “adaptive rowing” on the British Rowing website, you mostly get news stories about the topic and don’t find many of the club profiles.

The club names in the table include a hyperlink to the club website for more information, and the contact name includes a hyperlink to their email address (where it says “(Adaptive Rowing)” that means that the club does not have a specified contact).

The directory only includes clubs in England at the moment due to the way sports federations are set up in the UK. British Rowing looks after English clubs and have helped me with guidance on putting this directory together. I have contacted Welsh Rowing, Scottish Rowing and Irish Rowing associations to get some steer on adaptive clubs in those regions that I can add to the list.

Anyway, if you know of any clubs missing (or any information that is inaccurate or needs modifying, just let me know and I will update it.

KEY TO TABLE:

• Blue = Active adaptive rowing
• Green = Active coastal rowing
• Purple = School
• Black = Not active, but open to enquiries

Here is a link to the Google Map (snap shown above) where you can explore clubs by area.