A small detour from the travelling nature of this blog to visit an event closer to home. The games of the 30th Olympiad in London were a literally once in a lifetime event, and therefore worth adding to the record.
My experience of the games started when the games came to me, through the torch relay. Whilst it passed a way away it was good to see the excitement starting.
Before I actually got to go there, the fantastic opening ceremony started by swooping through the village where I grew up - broadcasting it to billions of people!
My first visit to see some sport was at the Millennium Stadium in Wales on the 1st August. We had picked these football tickets because they were (a) down the road and (b) gave us two matches to see. What we didn't expect at the time was that (c) we would see Team GB play and what we didn't know at the time was that (d) we also saw the overall winners Mexico play (and win against Mexico). The atmosphere was great, particularly when Team GB won but even from the start when Bradley Wiggins' victory was shown on the big screen. What wasn't so great were the travel arrangements at the train station on the way back - huge queues and no information - over 2 hours of waiting to get on a train.
The main event was a visit to the Olympic Part on Thursday 9th August. Contrary to warnings (and Cardiff experience) getting there was an easy experience (we were even the only people on an Olympic train at one point!). A visit up the Orbit was a highlight - whilst the viewing platform overlooking the stadium was crowded it was good to get a glimpse of what was going on within it and the rest of it was very impressive (although walking down the stairs may have been a mistake in the long run!). We also did a lot of walking around the park to see the different venues - fighting through the crowds at some points. Very impressive (and very hot - being a new park there was very little shade). Also saw big screen dressage (!), a public appearance by Sir Chris Hoy (who had forgotten his tracksuit) and the BBC's Jake Humphreys being ferried around the park on the back of an airport buggy.
After all this walking in the heat it was a bit of sinking into our seats when we got to the stadium. However the action (and the medal ceremonies) soon got us out of them. With field events going on (Decathlon Javelin, Men's Triple Jump and Women's Javelin) there was always something to see that was going on. Limited Brits in action this evening, but highlights of the action included the Men's 200m final (where the stadium was on its feet from the minute Usain Bolt entered the track and didn't sit down until he had passed them in his victory lap) and the Men's 800m which was a fantastic, amazing world record-breaking race where everyone in the race broke some sort of record. All in all a brilliant experience (not even dampened by the misadvertising as to how near West Ham station was!) which we were very fortunate to have from our names being pulled out of the original ticket ballot.
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