Your Olympic...

...roving reporter is back LOL

Yesterday's visit to Barleylands resulted in me joining a queue of traffic waiting to enter the site...why...I'd forgotten that Barleylands had been chosen by 'Locog' as a "Park & Ride" location for the Bike event to be held at Hadleigh.

Luckily, with the exception of the waiting area for the buses, the paved parking area was retained for visitors to the craft village (all Olympic visitors were directed to the marked out areas on the adjacent field).
Either these were brand new buses or they had been given a damn good wash as they were glistening in the sunlight.
There must have been 20+ of the things sitting waiting to convey folk to the Olympic site (sorry about this pic but being a shorty meant this was the best shot I could get).
Each of the buses was proudly displaying its destination.
Even the bus company name 'First' fits well with the event.

Arranging the 'park & ride' facilities a fair distance from the venue certainly kept traffic problems to a minimum - I had no problem at all getting to Mum's despite the predictions of gridlock conditions potentially cutting off Canvey Island.

Arriving at Mum's I noticed a tethered airship balloon over at Hadleigh...
...this photo was taken with my back to Mum's bungalow. You can get an idea of how close the Olympic events have been to us (if it hadn't been so hot yesterday, we might have walked down to the sea wall to see if we could actually catch the events from our side of Benfleet creek).

Tonight is the closing ceremony of the main Games and I think Team GB have done everyone proud.

When it was announced that we were aiming for 48 medals this time around there were a lot of folk who 'poo-pood' the idea...what did they know. We have (at the time of this post) 62 medals - 28 of them gold!!!

Whether folk wanted the Olympics here in the UK or not it has certainly created an overwhelming sense of pride in what can be achieved.

We have a couple of weeks for things to calm down a bit and then it will be the Paralympics - I hope that this support and 'feel-good' atmosphere continues through those games too.

In the past the coverage of the Paralympics has been pretty shameful which must be so disappointing to the athletes who take part after seeing all the 'hype' surrounding the main games. Team GB has done so well at the Paralympics in the past so it is only fair that we give them our support here on 'home ground'.

Let's support ALL our athletes in their endeavours.......................................