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The last in the series of Rowing Ireland's National Blade Heads takes place in Belfast this Saturday with the Lagan Head of the River hosted by Belfast Rowing Club.

There are 148 crews over the three races starting with pairs and sculls, then doubles and fours and finishing in the afternoon with eights and quads. The third race features 35 eights and 26 quads.

The big race of the day, the men's senior eights, which starts at 3.45 pm, will feature a high intensity race between the two Queen's University eights.  The A Queen's crew, with new strokeman, Mike Ewing, have been relatively the same crew for the last three years. This is the crew which mounted serious challenges to the victorious NUIG team at the Irish Rowing Championships, narrowly missing out on a national senior eight by a mere few feet on two occasions.  The A team's Ewing won a Wyfold cup (men's coxless four) at Henley last year.

The women's intermediate eights should prove interesting with a crew entered from St Andrews in Scotland who will be up against Queen's University Ladies and St Michael's, Limerick.

The men's junior 16 eights sees all the Ulster crews up against each other whilst the men's junior 18 quads sees Blackrock College, Dublin, Shandon ,Limerick and Offaly Rowing Club take on the Ulster schools.

Eight crews will contest the men's Master's pennant (over 28s) with Galway, Bann and Athlone pushing the Belfast-based masters crews, Belfast Boat Club, Belfast Rowing Club and the Lady Victoria Boat Club, all the way. The former Queen's ladies rower ,Frenchwoman Solange Garrais is bringing a men's Masters and a women's Masters quad from Aviron Grenoblois, France to compete.

The 10.45 am and 13.15 pm races start at the Albert Bridge in Belfast and finish at Queen's boathouse at Stranmillis. The 15.45 pm race starts at the Odyssey building in Belfast Harbour and finishes at Queen's boathouse at Stranmillis. There are viewing points along the full length of each race.

The official start to the regatta season takes place on Saturday 2nd April with the Neptune regatta at Islandbridge, Dublin.

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About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).