This is the first in a short series of posts sharing the story of Rowing The World. 2026 is the 15th year – time to celebrate!
Some time in 2004 I stood on a dock at Lago di Piediluco in Umbria, Italy, planning a rowing tour. Yes, eight years before I decided in 2012 to create Rowing The World and almost nine years before our first website launched in January 2013.
It was sunny on that dock. It must have been. The lake would have twinkled tiny sparkles of blue where the breeze barely riffled it. The Italian national rowing federation selected this lake for an Olympic training centre because low hills enclosed it from the wind, it was small but long enough and not a major tourist destination. Perfect for training, and I thought perfect for my first rowing tour.
Any photos, correspondence and planning documents for that tour and another one on the west coast of Canada and the USA are gone. All I have to remind me of my early rowing travel ambitions are 16 documents outlining marketing plans and implementation ideas plus one pricing spreadsheet for a rowing division of Randonnée Tours. A division which never saw the light of day, never had a customer.
Randonnée Tours was the cycling and walking tour company I co-founded in 1990 with my then husband. In 1999 I bought him out when we divorced. We specialized in self-guided tours in Europe. In the following years I expanded to add adventure trips across Canada and was considering destinations in the USA. I also began to contemplate rowing tours.
In 2004 Randonnée offered cycling trips in Umbria in collaboration with a local company in Perugia. Guiliana must have been the one who helped me contact the rowing centre on Lago di Piediluco. I can’t imagine how else I ended up on the dock, discussing how a weeklong tour might unfold for rowers not training for the Olympics but wanting to row in a beautiful location and visit Italy.
Echoes of the Past
Last week, thinking back to how Rowing The Word got started then finding and reading those few documents from Randonnée, I am amazed at how much I had forgotten about this tentative venture into the world of rowing travel. I am impressed by how much effort was invested. I am surprized at how similar Rowing The World adhered to my first – and long forgotten – ideas. But also how much changed. Rowing The World would never have considered creating a tour on Lago di Piediluco.
The draft “Fact Sheet” that would have been used to market the Umbria tour identifies available equipment as only a rowing coach might list it:
Shells (all of them are made of carbonium fiber):
- N° 1 quad (4x) , make “Salani”, rower weight 75/80 Kg
- N° 2 double (2x), make “Salani”, rower weight 75/85 Kg
- N° 1 single (1x), make “Salani”, rower weight 80/85 Kg
- N° 1 single (1x) make “Filippi”, rower weight 70 Kg
- N°2 “Maradona” (sort of wider boat for beginners)
- N° 3 canoes
- Oars made of carbonium fiber (blades in shape of “axe”, we say that to mean they are the wider ones)
- 1 motor boat for the coach
Who was the Stefano I find a mention of, or Anna who might be available to translate?
To research the “Best of the West” self-guided rowing tour, I visited rowing clubs, found accommodation and tested non-rowing activities in British Columbia and Washington State. Maybe I remember them better because these are clubs I have been back to many times to row from and to run promotional events for Rowing The World: Victoria City Rowing Club; Vancouver Rowing Club and Lake Union Crew when it was housed in a floating boathouse around the bend from Pocock Rowing Club in Seattle. I was amazed at their rowing tank, barely a few metres from water that was rowable almost year-round. In Canada few clubs have tanks, even though many of our rowing venues are covered by ice in the winter. It was my first indication of all the variety in rowing that I would later see as I grew Rowing The World.
A press release we issued from Randonnée on April 15, 2005 declares:
Travel to row and row when you travel: sample some of the best rowing and destinations on the West Coast of North America in a self-guided adventure with Randonnée Tours. Visit three premier destinations on the West Coast and combine your love of rowing with an opportunity to explore the food, culture and activities of Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. Combine all three locations into a full vacation or opt for individual modules or a combination of two destinations. In the Randonnée style, these self-guided vacations are not group tours, but are perfect for individuals or small groups of two or more. Choose any date to start, choose with whom you wish to travel with, and enjoy lots of flexibility and customization of your itinerary. Randonnée makes it easy.
Sound familiar?
No Randonnée Rowing
Later that year Randonnée was sold. Having survived the slumps in travel with 9/11, the Iraq war, mad cow disease, SARS and other body blows to the travel industry, I had had enough after 15 years. The plans for a rowing division were not included in the materials sent to the new owner.
I took a long break to rest and recover, then returned to work by rekindling my consulting company. That satisfied me for a while and then it didn’t.
I missed adventure travel. I wished for the creativity of designing something that would make people happy. I longed for the buzz of exploring a destination with a very specific filter, meeting interesting people, having unusual experiences that a tourist would not have. Adventure travel is a hard way to make a living but I couldn’t get the dream of a rowing travel company out of my mind.
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