"The Boat Race" is a rowing race between the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club. First raced 1839, missing a couple of years for the wars, but standings are surprisingly close 80 to 76. They said somewhere between a quarter and a half million people came out to watch, and I swear they were all trying to watch from the same place we were. In case you were planning to go next year, bring your own beer, because as far as I could tell buying drinks was the only reason there were so many people in the park. Pimms also seemed to be a favorite of many a spectator.
From talking to people it seemed drinking was the only real reason that the majority of them attended. And in all reality not sure why else you would go watch. The race is 15 or so minutes long, but you can only see the boats for maybe 2 minutes max. I saw an interesting description of the race in the newspaper the day before. Apparently Oxford and Cambridge have a lock on the race but they really aren't the best teams in the country. I guess it would be kinda like the Army Navy game being the most well attended college football game of the year. You would have to be super drunk to enjoy that!!
Was really funny to see 30 or so following boats behind these two tiny rowboats. The stirred up a hell of a lot of water.
Which led to the most exciting part of the day. You can see in this picture how high the water came up on this boat ramp. All these people were sitting all the way down to the water's edge, and seemed to have no idea what was coming as the race went down the river. I laughed!! 
I ride my bike over this bridge all the time, and frankly I was a little concerned over its integrity with the thousands of people standing on it.
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