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Champagne and strawberries at the Henley Regatta

© Stuart Buchanan MacWatt

London and its surrounding 'Home Counties' is a joyful place to be in June. The 'Season' is in full swing, with so many events to enjoy that it is hard to know which to pen into the calender. The social whirl extends from the cultural - the annual opening of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, to the sporty - Wimbledon Lawn Tennis championships, Royal Ascot, and my favourite summer jaunt in June, the Henley Regatta.

The Wimbledon championships start Monday mid- month and continue through until the first Sunday in July. However from the last Thursday in June until the first Sunday in July we don our faded rowing club blazers and straw boaters and take ourselves off to Henley on the River Thames for the Royal Regatta. Henley is the rowing fraternity's Wimbledon and the final day coincides with the Wimbledon Finals, an enfuriating coincidence, but the Henley organisers do at least broadcast the tennis results over the loudspeaker system.

Henley is a particularly attractive event to visit if you want to watch the English at play. The Thames here is beautiful, and the crowd who come to watch the international teams racing on the 2300 yard long stretch of the river are picturesque in a rather dotty way. The ladies in flimsy summer dresses and wide brimmed hats vie for attention with their menfolk in white pants and rowing blazers. Leander, that most prestigious of English rowing clubs has its club house just down from the finishing line and its members are prominent in their quite remarkably hideous bright pink blazers, ties and pink socks. For some of the club's now pear-shaped older members who can barely get their stomachs into their white pants and too tight blazer from younger days, the club's hippo motif is not inappropriate.

A picnic in the car-park is the norm at Henley. You are likely to see Irish linen tablecloths, the family silver, Waterford crystal champagne goblets, and even flowers emerge from the trunks of the Rolls-Royces and Range Rovers parked there. Fortnum & Masons do a roaring trade in their exclusive wicker picnic hampers from their Food Hall on the first floor at this time of the year. And I suspect that many of the picture book hats worn by the ladies came from the 2nd floor Millinery Department.

If you want to watch some serious rowing, Thursday is the day for you, with races every few minutes. Saturday is fireworks night, best watched from the vantage point of the bridge over the river

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