London Olympics right on track

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.

A RIGHT ROYAL SHOCK

Crikey! There we were in Windsor for a bit of a perambulation when who should turn up but the flaming Royals. Not just one of them either. It was flipping Royal Ascot today weren't it and the three of us from the visiting Aussie media - the honourable Michael (worm farm) Wade from Yahoo 7, Donna (Visit Ireland why don't you?) Campbell and I were treated to some exciting close encounters with their Royal highnesses.

First, we'd barely set foot in Windsor before Prince Philip came railing around a corner driving his favourite horse and buggy and not looking a day over the ninety years old he's just turned - please see photo below. The old fella looked happy as Larry and I was so astonished to see him that I quite forgot I had an actual message to give him from a tribe that worship him in Tanna, Vanuatu. No sooner had the Duke of Edinburgh appeared than he was racing past us leaving just the aroma of freshly delivered horsey poo in his wake. I feel intensely guilty because I promised the chief of the Yaohannen tribe on Tanna, Siko Nathuan, that I would get their message - "come and live with us in the hut we've built for your long awaited return" to paraphrase - to their chosen idol and I was simply so dumbfounded to actually encounter him that I said nothing.



Anyhow, after that we got an eyefull of the Queen's adored corgis and one old dorgy (dachshund/corgy love child) inside the castle grounds and then lo and behold, there was Her Majesty herself having a little ride just beyond the feeble reach of the lens I had available at the time. It was a flaming Royal feast I'll tell you.

But the Royals were not finished with us. A little later they set off from the castle en route to Ascot in a fleet of limos and the crack Aussie media team were there to bring you the news...That, sadly, former Eton schoolboy Wills and his brand new bride, Kate, in her brand new High Street branded clothes, weren't erm, there. Damn and blast and forgive my fascinator.

However, those who did give us a wave were: The Queen, the Duke of Eders, Prince Andrew, Princess Eugenie, Duchess Camilla of Prince Charles and some others the window reflections didn't give us a clear gander at.

Now that's what I call a happy coincidence. You go for a day looking around the gorgeous and magnificent riverside town of Windsor and you get almost a full set of the Royal family for your troubles. And I ain't even a royalist meself.

London looked ravishing today herself in the sunshine and the view from on high here at the brand new St Pancras Renaissance Hotel is spectacular. What a building this is - a masterpiece of Victorian flamboyance and pomposity but truly exquisite inside and out. And we even saw the bald bloke (who looks uncannily like the comedian Harry Hill) from UK Masterchef in the corridor.

I was born and brought up in this city and it's hard not to feel nostalgic on revisiting. I took so much for granted when growing up here - the amazing creativity, the extraordinary buildings, the theatre, the music, the pubs, the fifteen different languages being spoken in one tube carriage - but it's taken me a long time to realise and be brave enough to state that London really is back to its very best and among the most wonderful urban centres on this planet.

Come and you may just bump into a Vanuatan God!

Bobbing along like a cork in Cork

I've got five minutes spare during a very hectic and enjoyable Press trip to Ireland to check-in here. It's Sunday afternoon and we've just returned from a kayaking trip through the city centre of Cork on the River Lee with Barry from www.atlanticseakayaking.com. To be sure it was drizzling and overcast but hey, what's a bit of rain when you can paddle through a city centre with seals, swans and herons for company? For the record, there were four sprint races while we on the river too and the Tourism Ireland team, skippered by the fearless Donna Campbell and propelled exhaustedly by yours truly beat all comers. After feasting on soda bread, fresh Irish seafood and dairy products, mountainous breakfasts and every imaginable culinary delicacy from this part of Ireland it was excellent to do some stomach-tightening exercise.

I've not done many Press Trips in recent times - where a bunch of journalists are led around a country/region/from hotel to pub to pub to hotel by chaperones from national or regional tourist organisations - but i am thoroughly enjoying this one. While it's been full-on - we got straight on with it almost the moment myself and a fellow journalist, Gabrielle Dunlevy from AAP, arrived after twenty-seven hours of flying from Australia - it's had a great mix of cultural experiences, eating delectable food, guided walking tours and lovely drives through the simply gorgeous Irish countryside.

I've never felt so fresh arriving after such a long flight and that's in large part down to flying in British Airways's very comfortable Business Class on a space available upgrade. The seats, which flatten out to create a full lie down bed, may not be the top of the range when it comes to the premium product these days but the BA staff, particularly on the first leg (Sydney-Bangkok) of the BA10's journey did everything to make it an enjoyable trip. I slept about ten or eleven hours of the twenty three hours to London and that's about the best I've ever manage. I also watched the fantastic "The King's Speech", which, being a Dad of two young kids, I still hadn't seen. Reaching Heathrow the transfer from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1, where my Dublin flight with Aer Lingus was departing from, was really easy and all in all this was one of the least hassled journeys I've made between my adopted country and the continent of my birth.

It's such a cliche I know but with my roots very much in Ireland on my Mum's side - in fact from County Cork where I now am - I have a real feeling of being at home here. We had a sublime drive yesterday afternoon, along the coast south of Waterford and then into the sun-kissed countryside en route to Mallow, north of Cork and I just felt very touched by the undulating, green landscape.

We've dinner tonight (there you go I'm even sounding Irish already) here in Cork and no doubt we'll be hitting the town afterwards to sample some of the city's famous music in a couple of pubs. Sadly, after a four day whirlwind, that's it for our visit to Ireland and then we're heading to London and Weymouth with Sarah Styles from Visit Britain. We're checking out Windsor and the Olympics venues in the British capital and then looking at the Olympic sailing venue and doing some walking and sailing on Dorset's Jurassic coast after that. It's hard to believe that the 2012 Olympics are just over a year away.

I've barely scraped the surface of the riches we've experienced in this special, special country over the last few days. The Celtic Tiger's really been ravaged by the GFC and yet the people remain funny, charming and full of song and cities and towns like Waterford and Cobh - where the Titanic left from 99 years ago - are as beautiful and vibrant as they ever were.