Monthly Archives: September 2012

Our Greatest Team Athletes Parade

London 2012, , , ,

So the Olympics and Paralympics of London 2012 were over, but that didn’t mean the end of the fun by no means!!  Taking an extra day off work I stayed in London so that I could see the Athletes Parade.  Leaving our luggage at the hotel, I wandered onto the Strand to find it nearly deserted so went up to Covent Garden before mooching around to Trafalgar Square.  By the time I got there (having found a few mascots to photograph on the way), there were quite a few people gathering so I decided that I had probably better choose my place.

As the main part of the crowd was the Trafalgar Square side of the roundabout by Admarilty Arch I decided to go the otherside as it meant that I could get only 1 person back from the road and with a pretty clear view.  Now all that was required was to wait!  Thankfully the weather stayed (despite a few drops of rain) dry and not too hot so most of the crowd survived the long wait no problem.  I did see three people taken away, one by Ambulance, after collapsing but they were all awake so hopefully they are all ok.

Despite the wait, and the ever growing number of people and therefore getting a bit cramped on space, the crowd was in fine spirits and two sides of the road just along from where I was started chanting in response to each other and then they had a mini race between one member of each – anything to keep amused!  By this stage the police had pretty much closed off the road (apart from the Household Calvary that came past twice), and cyclists who got a big cheer (we were quite bored!).

At 1pm, the big screen in Trafalgar Square kicked into life and started showing the Channel 4 coverage (inc adverts) so we were able to see the parade leaving and making its way along and it was obvious that Trafalgar Square was not the only place that there were huge crowds, but they were all along the route – fantastic!!  The atmosphere was just amazing, and even the police were still on a high – police on horseback and motorcycles were even going along and highfiving spectators!

BA as one of the main sponsors were handing out boards to allow people to put a message on for the Athletes, and I eventually got hold of one that you can see in my picture here (taken much later on) :

I was starting to get quite tired, hungry and thirsty by this stage as I’d been standing in the same spot for 4 hours but despite having food & drink with me I didn’t want to move or have too much of it for fear of needing the loo and therefore having to move so small sips & nibbles it was.  Luckily, the parade finally reached us at around 3pm, just before which the people in front of me moved so I was able to get right to the front – lucky!

Seeing all the athletes was fantastic, and especially as it was just done by sport in alphabetical order with Paralympians and Olympians mixed up together – just as it should be.  It turned out though that I’d picked the wrong side of the street as most of the most well-known of the athletes were the other side of the lorry looking away from us as they went past as that was where most of the people and the press were – doh!  Still I managed to see quite a lot (when the guy next to me wasn’t waving manically in my face) and take a few photos and videos and I was very happy to be there to cheer and support the team.

Once all the floats had gone past, we mostly all stayed standing where we were and watched the Mall celebrations on the big screen but at least I was at last able to eat my lunch and have a drink without fear of missing the parade!  The flypast was great, especially the Red Arrows (as usual) and noone really wanted to leave after it was over.  I wandered over to Trafalgar Square and saw the Gamesmakers and other people still celebrating and dancing but they then closed the live site (boo) so we all had to leave but that didn’t stop the dancing!  I was pretty tired by now having been standing for so long so I decided to head off, weary but so pleased that I’d come and seen the parade and been a part of the celebrations for Our Greatest Team!  Roll on Glasgow 2014 and Rio 2016!!

(Some of the photos I took are on Flickr here)

Final day of the London 2012 Paralympics :(

London 2012, Sport, , , ,

All good things come to an end (unfortunately) and so the final day of the Paralympics of London 2012 arrived.  Boo hoo!!!  I’d been lucky enough to get Wheelchair Rugby tickets for the Gold and Bronze medal matches so we headed to the park where we would meet up with my inlaws.  On the way to the venue though we bumped into Stephanie Millward who was happy to have her picture taken with people whilst they held a medal – well I couldn’t pass up that opportunity even if it did mean we missed most of the first quarter of the Bronze medal match!

None of us had seen Wheelchair Rugby live before but we enjoyed both matches and theres no holds barred as they crash into each other at full speed!  Australia were by far the best team out of the four and deservedly won Gold with Ryley Batt being their star player – the way he could manouvere his wheelchair around people just by shifting his weight was amazing!  We had spotted Prince Edward and Stephen Fry watching, and it turned out Edward gave out the Gold medals and Fry the flowers to the Silver medal winners (Canada).  You can see some pictures that I took here.

After the rugby, we hung around in the park having a spot of food (MacDonalds again – and there was a cheer when it opened for all us hungry ceremony goers!) and just waiting until it was time to meet up with our friends before going into the Stadium for the (sob) last time.  Having the athletes come in before it started and therefore enjoy the whole show was a nice touch, and I think on the whole I preferred the Paralympic Closing Ceremony to the Olympic one as it was more of a show rather than a random collection of big names.  And thats even though I’m not a great fan of Coldplay and don’t know most of their songs!  It was sad to see the flame go out again (I booed just like last time!), but really enjoyed the big firework display which thanks to our seats we could see most of!  Some pictures of the ceremony are here.

As we made our way out, it was obvious that people did not want the party to end and there were several impromptu performances, singing and dancing going on all around the stadium.  Unfortunately we couldn’t stay too long (boo hoo again) as my other half was working the next day so we made our way out of the park for the last time (sob) and along to the tube which we were able to get on with no wait – yet again the transport system worked without a hitch!  We had arranged to stay in the Strand Palace hotel again having stayed their the previous weekend and it having been so good and friendly and even though we were checking in at 12am it was no problem to get our bags out of the luggage storage and check in (we’d dropped our bag off in the morning).  Can highly recommend it as a good place to stay in Central London!

I’ll leave my thoughts on London 2012 as a whole for another post, but it was a great final day at the Paralympics even if I am very sad that its over!  Still there was still the Athletes Parade to come…

A busy day at the Paralympics

London 2012, , ,

Having taken the whole of the Olympics off work, I wasn’t able to do the same for the Paralympics so was restricted to going at the weekends so I booked tickets for the first Saturday for me, my sister-in-law and a few friends.

First up was the Aquatic Centre, somewhere where I hadn’t been during the Olympics and was keen to see and experience.  Our seats weren’t too far up (thankfully as like the other venues being steeply angled its quite an effort to walk high up!), and level with the starting blocks so we had a great view.  The curve of the roof meant that we couldn’t see the spectators on the other side of the pool which is a bit odd but the atmosphere (even though we were only watching heats) was amazing!  We also saw several records, including by Ellie Simmonds who won her heat with ease (and went on later that evening to claim GOLD!).  It was (like most indoor venues) pretty warm but that didn’t stop us enjoying ourselves and screaming ourselves hoarse for each TeamGB member!!  I took a few pictures which you can see here.

Having picked up a bit of lunch (not McDonalds yet!), we started to walk over to the Basketball arena to use our Day Passes but the signs informed us that all Day Pass seats were taken (boo, hoo) so instead we headed for the Riverbank Arena to watch 7 a-side football which is for athletes with Cerebral Palsy and similar.  The second match in the session was going to be TeamGB so we wanted to go and support them!  The first match was Ukraine vs USA and Ukraine were much the better team and ran out 9-0 winners – we hoped that TeamGB would do better in the second match!  They did, but given that they were playing Brazil, it was no surprise that they lost but it was a much closer match and GB did have their chances to score.  Again you can see a few pictures here.

After dinner at McDonalds (still the fastest and easiest way to have food at the park!), my sister-in-law and I headed for the Olympic Stadium and our seats were five rows from the front just level with the 100m start line – wow!!!  We didn’t see TeamGB win any medals unfortunately, but we did see Gemma Prescott receive hers and saw several athletes competing so we still had a fantastic time.  At the end we did stay and see the final medal ceremonies (even though the stadium was emptying and there were no GB medals to be presented) as everyone deserved our support, praise and respect and it turned out that Lord Coe was presenting the medals so we got to see him quite close up.  The pictures from that night are here.

All in all, we had a fabulous day even though we didn’t see much Team GB success!