I rowed in a Celtic Longboat for the first time five years ago. If I had known more about the challenge which confronted me I might never have stepped in the boat. Had that happened I would have missed one of the best experiences of my life.

The Celtic Longboat is a four person coxed rowing boat and has a long history on the West Wales Coast. The start of the modern longboats began in 1978 when Tom Sutton, working on Ramsey Island, found the remains of an Irish Curragh, a wooden framed, tarred-skinned rowing boat, washed up. With the kind of initiative, imagination and skill that deserves to have his name enshrined in some boating Hall of Fame Tom rebuilt the boat.

Tom re-skinned the boat and entered it for the local Solva Traditional Rowing Race, switched to fibre glass and the rest is maritime history.

These boats now compete in races around the treacherous West Wales Coast, including the Dinas Head Challenge, which will be held in early August this year.

So what am I doing in a “four person coxed rowing boat” with long oars, the need for enough skill at least to make the oar work, warnings about getting a piece of good sheepskin under your bottom or you will suffer and surrounded by real sailors?

The dialogue leading up to my initial training went something like this: “Why don’t your join us in the Dinas Head Challenge,” says one of the happy band of sailors, all retired. They seemed to have been sailing in everything just short of the Whitbread Single Handed Round the World Race. And possibly rowing the Atlantic as well. We meet in a weekly Welsh Language Discussion Group in Newport.

“No thanks,” I said. “The most advanced rowing I have done was with my kids 30 years ago on Talkin Tarn near Carlisle.”

“We will train you and show you how to row,” says George Potts, Commodore of the Boat Club no less, whom I suspected had been sailing and rowing since he was pre-school.

“No, forget it. I can’t read maps, never mind these chart things you need to understand or you crash into rocks or get swept out into the Atlantic. “ “You don’t have to do that. You only have to row. The Cox steers,” was the next comment and I loved that word “only.” Have you seen the size of these oars? I doubted if I could lift one, never mind row with it.

“Give it a try,” says Daphne, my wife. “ George and Ray (Ray Jones, secretary of the club and another pre-school sailor, I suspect) are about the same age as you. They row.” Ah yes, I could feel my defences terminally breached.

I looked around, asked who else rowed these boats, and decided that I just had to try.

I agreed and the first training session was arranged. Later that year, in a boat coxed by Susan Potts and the crew largely trained by her, we finished a credible 5th in the Dinas Head Challenge out of more 20 boats.

We did have a start as a “veteran” crew but rowing round Dinas Head, after the rowing out from Goodwick, and knowing I could finish the race was the kind of feeling you don’t get very often.

This afternoon, sea a bit choppy, but with the weather glorious I rowed again and the pleasure remains. Today, George and Susan were again in the boat; Tina,the Cox, gave me the kind of encouragement and advice I needed. I still can’t get the oar to flatten and skim as I move it back but I am improving. My friend Helen whose enthusiasm and progress in rowing makes her an ideal example for me or anyone else also rowed this afternoon. We rowed about five miles, were out just short of two hours, and I still marvel at my luck in being there.