Rowing on Telly (cont)

By popular demand, here's a still of Dan Snow from Empire of the Seas on the Beeb earlier this week. He is rowing down the Medway past Upnor Castle, where Nelson was rowed to his ship as a new midshipman. Except that Snow is rowing a plastic repro lugger with the usual stump things that sailors buy from the chandlers and never use (I have seen pairs of Plastimos in mint condition in the bottom of many a hard-sailed dinghy). They are far too short to be of any use whatsoever and as a result he is thrashing away like a good 'un but going nowhere.
Upnor is a lovely place - I played bat and trap in the Kings Arms there once. My team won convincingly, but at the end of the evening I still had no idea how the score was calculated. I think they went out the back and sacrificed chickens.