I was blown away by a tour of the Olympic venue at Stratford this morning. It’s a huge achievement and is almost ready a year ahead of the event. In this day and age when builders tend to quote you $10,000 for the reno you always dreamed of and then present you with a bill for $25K at the end, it’s quite remarkable to report that they have come in £1 billion under budget. Incredible stuff.
Just wait until you see the velodrome – where Britain and Australia will probably be going head to head in the fiercest rivalry since the Ashes – it’s one of the most beautiful sports stadiums you’ll ever see. But the whole Olympic Park is magnificent and most impressively has reclaimed huge tracts of land, including clearing and cleaning 2 million cubic tonnes of contaminated soil. There was still detritus beside the River Lea site from the Germans bombing of London during World War 2, including one of the biggest un-detonated bombs ever discovered.
I was very impressed by the overall way in which the development has been considered as a place for the future as much as for the short period of the games. I can throw lots of figures at you about the housing being created and the employment opportunities both before and during the Olympics for this down-at-heel area of London and how transformed it is and will be. But I won’t. Except to say that soon there will be a 180 mile per hour train launched that will cut journey time from central London to Stratford from 40 minutes to just seven!!
We’ve just two more days left of this media trip. It’s brought together seven people from Australia – five journos and two public relations minders – who didn’t know each other, for a total of ten days. We’re now at the stage of giving each other a bit of curry now and then and it’s fun. Travelling like this at its best is like a bunch of mates hitting the road and sometimes like a big family, with discernible Mum and Dad figures, sensible elders and partying younger ones. Funny, I definitely used to be one of the partying set but these days I tend to go upstairs and make myself a cup of cocoa (or chamomile tea) in my room while I try to get my head around the following conundrum:
How to email a scan of my passport to Australia in order to facilitate participation on a media famil in three weeks time to Papua New Guinea while also emailing and skyping Australia to contact with Lufthansa’s Public Relations rep there to help me out with a flight to Munich next weekend to facilitate a two day press trip before I move on to four days in Denmark, which until today, two weeks before the event, I’ve had no confirmation of. With that one, everything’s started happening all of a sudden and it’s necessitated me availing myself of free wi-fi at a motorway service station half way through a three hour drive to Weymouth, where we’re spending the next two days. So off went the flight requests to Visit Denmark and soon I may be able to concentrate on the beautiful Dorset countryside and play “20 questions” with my adopted family here in the mini-bus. As well as enjoy the sites. “Did you see the size of that f…ing pig?” “It was absolutely f…ing enormous, in no way a micro-pig!”
Mind you for some reason my companions weren’t happy with me deciding, in the game of 20 Questions, that I was King Louis the cartoon orangutan from the film “Jungle Book” when they had to ask me their allotted questions. “Do you have a beard?” “Well, yes, sort of.”
It’s lovely to get to know people as you travel and feel relaxed in giving and getting a bit of teasing. Hats off to Michael “Wormy” Wade on this trip for tolerating the worst of it after mentioning that he has to eat continually in order to feed his metabolism. It’s envy of course, for those of us who pile on the weight when eating big breakfasts, lunches and dinner on an experiential press trip like this. It takes a special sort of person to really fit into this kind of group and not feel occasionally awkward but I’ve rarely come across a travel writer who is not very good natured and sensitive and certainly the participants on this trip are all the same.
We ate at Jamie’s Italian restaurant last night on St Martin’s Lane and it was fab. I don’t like the incredible hype that surrounds chefs but I honestly think that Jamie Oliver uses his fame extremely well and I really enjoyed the rustic Italian food at the restaurant.
I’m beginning to sniff the sea as we near the coast. Last time I was in Weymouth I was working on a double-decker exhibition bus for the European Union and spent a week with it parked up on the esplanade. During this time I stayed at an old-fashioned B&B on the seafront and ran the gauntlet of a fierce old-style landlady who I’ll call for the sake of invention and identity protection, Mrs Mangle. Mrs Mangle expected no late nights and punctuality at the inedible breakfasts and astonishingly horrid dinners of plastic meats (of undiscernible origin), cold potatoes and boiled to death colourless veg. In addition she expected good manners, neat attire and endless compliments – not sure whether she’s still in business or running one of Her Majesty’s prisons.
I’ve already checked out the website of the B&B Weymouth where we are staying for two nights and am fairly confident that the above experiences will not be repeated. Instead, we’re promised a new breed of bed and breakfast, with free wi-fi, which I’ll use to post this on arrival and a rather gentler management than that of Mrs Mangle.
“It would be my dream B&B if it was full of puppies” says one of our party. “Yes, it’d be lovely to have them climb and jump all over your bed,” agrees another. I think some people are missing home.
Which reminds me that we finally got the Skype connection working properly between me and my family back home in Charlotte Bay. Loved seeing my two little girls, our youngest Freya still plastered in egg from her dinner, and their Mum and receiving their smooches on the home computer and I’m sure it must seem pretty magical to a three and a one year old to see their Dad on the computer screen. Better stop before I get mushy and anyhow, Weymouth, the Olympic sailing venue for 2012, is just around the corner now.
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