Happy Birthday Chertsey

Today is Chertsey's birthday - her official birthday at least, the day she is recorded as having been 'delivered' from Harland and Wolff to GUCCCo.

Here she is in the first year of her life, as pictured in Alan Faulkner's The George and the Mary (and wrongly captioned in the new edition), loading strawboard at Northampton.

And here are a few more snapshots from different points in her life.

At Stratford, in 1964:

Photo: Max Sinclair

And back again fifty years later:

Here's Chertsey in 1970 on the River Wey, en route to the National at Guildford:

Photo: Richard Pearson

And here she is in 2016, on the Wey again for probably the first time since, this time on the way (pun unavoidable) to the HNBC rally:

Happy 82nd birthday old girl.