South Wales Coastal Rowing Club based in Barry is gearing up for a ‘Monster’ of a row. Some of its members will be travelling up to Scotland later this month to participate in the ‘Monster the Loch’ challenged held in Loch Ness.

The challenge is a mighty 21 miles row that allows all ‘human powered boat types’ to compete. The course which runs from Fort Augustus roughly takes about 4 hours to finish however, the epic race has seen this record broken numerous times.

Celtic Longboat 'Tess'Celtic Longboat 'Tess' (Image: Tony Peters)

Tony Peters Chairman of the club let us know how ‘Team Barry’ are getting on. He said:

“It’s the first time we’ve done and the race itself and we don’t know how it’ll go-we’ve got 3 crews going up, so 15 members, -there’s 5 in each boat.”

“It’ll be a bit different for us because its fresh water and with fresh water the boats do sink lower in the water.”

South Wales Coastal Rowing Club RacingSouth Wales Coastal Rowing Club Racing (Image: South Wales Coastal Rowing Club)

The Team is training hard for the strenuous event:

“We are lucky as we are a British ‘Go Row’ indoor centre. With our rowing machines, we wire them all up to the computer and each rowing machine represents a boat on the screen so, we race each other on there.”

Team Barry is putting the youth of today to shame.

Tony explained: “The Team is I would say is 50 plus, - one guy is nearly 70 (he’s 69).”

The race is on September 21st and the crew will be racing in Celtic Longboats. explained The club’s main racing longboat Tess was named in memory of Tony’s mother who passed away.

Celtic Longboat 'Tess'Celtic Longboat 'Tess' (Image: Tony Peters)

Presently, the current record is held by ‘The Great British 8+’ who clocked a time of 2hrs 4mins and 57sec this broke the previous record by 22 minutes.

The fastest Pedalo record holder is a respectable 7hrs 19mins 35 seconds!

Barry and District News wishes the lads and lassies in the club good luck!