Look inside the £300,000 boathouse at Inverness Rowing Club
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INVERNESS Rowing Club are confident that its £300,000 boathouse development on the shores of the Caledonian Canal can help strengthen its reputation as one of the top rowing destinations in the country.
Clubs from across the country, as well as its own members have been making use of its improved facilities which have been built at Torvean.
The development has seen the creation of a boathouse along with welfare cabins, changing rooms and a compound area complete with training room with indoor rowing machines.
The venue is seen as being a major catalyst to help boosting rowing in the Highlands as it is looking to increase more people getting involved in the sport.
Inverness Rowing Club president Robert Gordon says the new facilities will compliment what is already an outstanding venue for rowing in Scotland.
He hopes it will help Inverness come out of the shadows and help grow the city’s reputation in Scottish and UK rowing.
He said: “We already had the water, now we have the boathouse, welfare facilities and changing rooms needed to go with it.
“The cost of the new boathouse development is around £300,000 and it is an idea which probably started 10 years ago.
“When the West Link Development happened with the new bridge, that pushed us on. It enabled to get us a community asset transfer from the land next to us and that kicked everything forward.
“By the people who already use the canal, we already knew the water was an excellent rowing venue.
“But we now have the opportunity for people to use it more often as the boathouse accounts more for the needs of modern athletes.
“Three years ago we were in a place that had no electricity and you needed to be hardy souls to come down here in winter.
“People would come and leave quite quickly. Now we have facilities where people can come and stay longer and stay warm.
“It is now a much more enjoyable venue and what people expect from a rowing club.”
The improvement of facilities at Inverness Rowing Club has already strengthened its reputation in Scotland.
Gordon says top clubs and university teams from across Scotland are heading to Inverness to train in preparation for top competitions and it is also benefitting the local economy too.
He said: “Glasgow University have been out here for a week as part of a training camp.
“St Andrews University have been training here too and Aberdeen University are here just now with Robert Gordon University.
“We are open to everyone coming and enjoying the facilities at Inverness Rowing Club.
“The facilities are bringing value to the economy with people coming in and have been staying in Inverness as they have been using us a long distance training venue which it is designed for as well.
“The Caledonian Canal is unsurpassed as a rowing venue in Scotland as we don’t have any natural flow coming into the canal.”
Inverness Rowing Club currently has around 100 members with a mix of junior and senior members at the club.
Among some of its most successful members include Alan Sinclair, who was part of the Great Britain squad at Rio in 2016 and former World and European Champion in Lightweight Women's Single Scull Imogen Walsh.
However, Gordon says the rowing club is not just about finding athletes for elite competition, he says there is a social aspect to the club as well as competitive.
He said: “We are just shy of probably towards 100 members, we have capacity for more and we want to try and promote the sport and get more people to come and try it.
“We have a junior section with over 20 members who train on Friday morning and Saturday morning with supportive coaching and we are looking to grow that.
“A few of them have been chosen to compete in a major race in Nottingham in the next few weeks as for the first time Scotland is able to race in the inter regional regatta.
“Our job now is to develop interest in rowing in the Inverness area. We are the most northerly rowing club in the UK and anything we can do encourage folk to come out in the water we will try.”
“We are as much about social rowing as we are about folk wanting to aim for the elite element. We want to attract people to rowing as there is nothing finer than heading out on the canal when it is nice and quiet and we want to encourage that as well.
“We are also looking to work with schools to try and expand the pool of youth athletes that are coming along.
“Some athletes don’t want to compete which is fine and others want to progress through the ranks.”
Gordon says rowing is a sport where interest surges during an Olympic year but interest does go down in-between.
It says the sport does have an elitist reputation, but Inverness Rowing Club are keen to put the message out that rowing is accessible to all and invites people to give it a try.
“Rowing is one of these sports where people watch it at the Olympics and think it is an easy sport.
“It does have an elitist reputation where people see it as a middle class or university sport, but we need to break down those perceptions. Our membership fees are reasonable and all the equipment is available for everyone to use. Rowing in itself is a physical demanding sport, a lot of pain and blisters and hard work to move a boat fast, which surprises people when they try.
“If people want a real challenge they should give rowing a try.”
