Olympic snapshots: Aquatics Centre These two ramshackle buildings are fairly typical of the industrial skeletons to be found scattered around London's Olympic development site. They were half derelict when I took this photograph 18 months ago, a crumbling example of what happens when an area is left quietly to fall apart, and have since been demolished. We're looking out across the Waterworks River on the eastern edge of the Olympic Zone, on the very spot where London's new Aquatics Centre is about to be constructed. The powers that be have promised to build two 50m swimming pools and a 25m diving pool here, whether we win the 2012 Games or not, which is the sort of government commitment this deprived area so desperately needs. The inhabitants of nearby Stratford wait expectantly to see whether this new water feature will be full of international champions breaking world records or just teenagers divebombing one another and urinating in the shallow end when they think nobody's looking.
Olympic snapshots: Olympic Park Heaven knows why the IOC originally complained that the Olympic Zone area was inaccessible and underconnected because you can't move around here for train tracks. Branch lines, mainlines, light rail lines, tube lines, they're all here already. And sidings - acres and acres and acres of railway sidings. Some are already in the process of being transformed into StratfordInternational station, immediately to the east of the proposed stadium, and ever so convenient for (ahem) all those eager Parisian visitors to the 2012 Games. However, as you'll see from this photo, Thornton Fields sidings have yet to be transformed. They run off the mainline from Liverpool Street to Norwich, sandwiched on a long island site between two of the Bow Back Rivers. During the week inter-city trains are stockpiled here during that daytime lull between the morning and evening rush hours. But visit at the weekend, as I did, and the sidings are completely deserted. I'd been out taking a stroll down the Waterworks River, not another living soul in sight, when I noticed an unlocked iron gate beckoning invitingly from the towpath. There was no warning sign telling me to keep out so I wandered through into the empty sidings and stood all alone beside the vacant tracks and gantries. It was an eerie experience, and I had a gut feeling that this was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. Come 2012 and these sidings will be wiped from the map to be replaced by a wide paved pedestrian walkway linking together the major sporting facilities up and down the two-mile-long Olympic site. I look forward to standing here again, still not a train in sight, but surrounded by hundreds of thousands of bustling spectators.
Olympic snapshots: the Olympic Village A Velopark is planned for the very northern tip of the Olympic Park, tucked inbetween the A12 and New Spitalfields market. £22miliion will be spent constructing a velodrome and an outdoor BMX circuit where blokes in tight lycra can wear enjoy wearing streamlined pointy helmets in public. But there's already a major cycling facility just a few hundred yards to the south - the 53 acre Eastwaycyclecircuit. A mile-long tarmac track curves invitingly through hilly green heathland, with challenging off-road tracks scattered around inbetween. London cyclists love Eastway and, as a visiting pedestrian, I was quite taken by it too. Not that there was any evidence that this circuit is ever used by cyclists any more. The changing rooms were padlocked, the admission prices were years out of date and the only official presence as I wandered around the track was a security guard with a very large alsatian. If the IOC award the 2012 Games to London, the Eastway circuit will be eradicated so that the Olympic Village and other sporting facilities can be constructed on the site. The world's best athletes and Paralympians will live right here, for a fortnight each, on the very spot from which I took this photograph. The Olympic village will also consume some really (really) nasty student flats nextdoor at Clays Lane (yes, I know they all belong to a well-meaning co-operative, but you'd really only live here if you had no choice). Hopefully the social housing left behind by the Olympics will create a more worthwhile place for disadvantaged local Londoners to live.
Olympic snapshots: Hockey Stadium Wander through to the southern edge of the Eastway cycle circuit and there, hidden down a well-hidden footpath, you may stumble upon the delights of the Bully Point Nature Reserve. I was charmed to discover this verdant mini-valley hidden away between some allotments and a giant building site, extremely close to the tunnel mouth into which Eurostar trains will plunge on their seven minute journey to St Pancras. Here the tiny Channelsea River flows, here trees and bushes explode each summer in a riot of green, and here butterflies silently flit between the fragrant flowers on the riverbank. Even kingfishers are regularly seen, here, bang in the middle of a godforsaken East London wasteland. To be honest it's only the urban location that makes this lowly spot feel so special. But a successful London Olympic bid would erase this natural beauty spot forever. The Channelsea river would be diverted and the allotments concreted over, while Bully Point would disappear forever beneath the pitch of a new Hockey Stadium. In fact the entire Olympic development zone would have to be fenced off for several years leading up to 2012, its green corridors made wholly inaccessible to us local residents while all evidence of reality was obliterated. Sure the new Olympic park would have trees and flowers and rivers but they'd all be fresh, sanitised and artificial. And somehow, I suspect, rather disappointing. Standing here in peaceful silence amongst the leaves and buzzing insects, I hoped for the first time that London's Olympic bid might fail so that the wildlife residents of Bully Point could survive into a more permanent future.
The London Olympics? 2012
These two ramshackle buildings are fairly typical of the industrial skeletons to be found scattered around London's Olympic development site. They were half derelict when I took this photograph 18 months ago, a crumbling example of what happens when an area is left quietly to fall apart, and have since been demolished. We're looking out across the Waterworks River on the eastern edge of the Olympic Zone, on the very spot where London's new Aquatics Centre is about to be constructed. The powers that be have promised to build two 50m swimming pools and a 25m diving pool here, whether we win the 2012 Games or not, which is the sort of government commitment this deprived area so desperately needs. The inhabitants of nearby Stratford wait expectantly to see whether this new water feature will be full of international champions breaking world records or just teenagers divebombing one another and urinating in the shallow end when they think nobody's looking.
Heaven knows why the IOC originally complained that the Olympic Zone area was inaccessible and underconnected because you can't move around here for train tracks. Branch lines, mainlines, light rail lines, tube lines, they're all here already. And sidings - acres and acres and acres of railway sidings. Some are already in the process of being transformed into Stratford International station, immediately to the east of the proposed stadium, and ever so convenient for (ahem) all those eager Parisian visitors to the 2012 Games. However, as you'll see from this photo, Thornton Fields sidings have yet to be transformed. They run off the mainline from Liverpool Street to Norwich, sandwiched on a long island site between two of the Bow Back Rivers. During the week inter-city trains are stockpiled here during that daytime lull between the morning and evening rush hours. But visit at the weekend, as I did, and the sidings are completely deserted. I'd been out taking a stroll down the Waterworks River, not another living soul in sight, when I noticed an unlocked iron gate beckoning invitingly from the towpath. There was no warning sign telling me to keep out so I wandered through into the empty sidings and stood all alone beside the vacant tracks and gantries. It was an eerie experience, and I had a gut feeling that this was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. Come 2012 and these sidings will be wiped from the map to be replaced by a wide paved pedestrian walkway linking together the major sporting facilities up and down the two-mile-long Olympic site. I look forward to standing here again, still not a train in sight, but surrounded by hundreds of thousands of bustling spectators.
A Velopark is planned for the very northern tip of the Olympic Park, tucked inbetween the A12 and New Spitalfields market. £22miliion will be spent constructing a velodrome and an outdoor BMX circuit where blokes in tight lycra can wear enjoy wearing streamlined pointy helmets in public. But there's already a major cycling facility just a few hundred yards to the south - the 53 acre Eastway cycle circuit. A mile-long tarmac track curves invitingly through hilly green heathland, with challenging off-road tracks scattered around inbetween. London cyclists love Eastway and, as a visiting pedestrian, I was quite taken by it too. Not that there was any evidence that this circuit is ever used by cyclists any more. The changing rooms were padlocked, the admission prices were years out of date and the only official presence as I wandered around the track was a security guard with a very large alsatian. If the IOC award the 2012 Games to London, the Eastway circuit will be eradicated so that the Olympic Village and other sporting facilities can be constructed on the site. The world's best athletes and Paralympians will live right here, for a fortnight each, on the very spot from which I took this photograph. The Olympic village will also consume some really (really) nasty student flats nextdoor at Clays Lane (yes, I know they all belong to a well-meaning co-operative, but you'd really only live here if you had no choice). Hopefully the social housing left behind by the Olympics will create a more worthwhile place for disadvantaged local Londoners to live.
Wander through to the southern edge of the Eastway cycle circuit and there, hidden down a well-hidden footpath, you may stumble upon the delights of the Bully Point Nature Reserve. I was charmed to discover this verdant mini-valley hidden away between some allotments and a giant building site, extremely close to the tunnel mouth into which Eurostar trains will plunge on their seven minute journey to St Pancras. Here the tiny Channelsea River flows, here trees and bushes explode each summer in a riot of green, and here butterflies silently flit between the fragrant flowers on the riverbank. Even kingfishers are regularly seen, here, bang in the middle of a godforsaken East London wasteland. To be honest it's only the urban location that makes this lowly spot feel so special. But a successful London Olympic bid would erase this natural beauty spot forever. The Channelsea river would be diverted and the allotments concreted over, while Bully Point would disappear forever beneath the pitch of a new Hockey Stadium. In fact the entire Olympic development zone would have to be fenced off for several years leading up to 2012, its green corridors made wholly inaccessible to us local residents while all evidence of reality was obliterated. Sure the new Olympic park would have trees and flowers and rivers but they'd all be fresh, sanitised and artificial. And somehow, I suspect, rather disappointing. Standing here in peaceful silence amongst the leaves and buzzing insects, I hoped for the first time that London's Olympic bid might fail so that the wildlife residents of Bully Point could survive into a more permanent future.
These two 
Heaven knows why the IOC originally complained that the Olympic Zone area was inaccessible and underconnected because you can't move around here for train tracks. Branch lines, mainlines, light rail lines, tube lines, they're all here 
A 
Wander through to the southern edge of the 