Are you worried about how you're going to travel to your Olympic event next year? I know, probably not, because you didn't get any tickets (seethe). But let's assume you did. Good news, you can now plan precisely what time you need to leave home and how you're going to arrive at your chosen venue using the Spectator Journey Planner. It pays to be prepared. So let's try a few sample journeys and see what we can discover about Olympic travel next summer...
Sample journey 1: Bow Church to the Olympic Stadium (for the Opening Ceremony) Or, in other words, my house to the Olympic Park - a journey I can normally manage on foot in less than 15 minutes.
Leave 17:55 → walk to Northern Spectator Entrance (20 minutes) → arrive 19:30 Hang on, how does a 20 minute walk take 1 hour 35 minutes? Ah, there's a reason...
"Additional time has been allowed in your journey for airport-style security at your venue and unforeseen delays on the transport network." I think we can discount "unforeseen delays on the transport network", because I'm walking. It looks like airport-style security is the main driver here, potentially wasting an hour of my time in a lengthy friskdown queue, so they want me to start out early just in case. Or maybe even earlier.
"However, you may wish to allow for additional time in your journey plan. To do this, please re-plan your journey with an earlier arrival time." The underlying message here appears to be "best be paranoid and turn up as early as possible."
I'm also mystified why they want me to walk to the Northern Spectator Entrance when the Western and Southern Entrances are considerably closer. Glitch, or deliberate crowd control?
Sample journey 2: Buckingham Palace to Horseguards Parade (for the Beach Volleyball) Well, you never know, the Queen might want to go. Usually 8 minutes on foot, or 3 minutes by Gold Coach.
Leave 12:42 → walk to Horse Guards Parade Northern Spectator Entrance (8 minutes) → arrive 14:00 Again, that's a dead-lengthy security-queue delay. Indeed, every journey in the entire database seems to have a contingency one hour tagged onto the end. It's a very pessimistic journey planner... but then one wouldn't want to be late, would one?
Sample journey 3: Wembley Arena to the Aquatic Centre (for the Diving) A simple cross-London journey between venues - should be one Jubilee line train.
Leave 11:10 → walk to Wembley Park (14 minutes, 11:56) → Metropolitan line to Liverpool Street (31 minutes, 12:27) → Central line to Stratford (9 minutes, 12:39) → walk to Eastern Spectator Gate (12 minutes) → arrive 14:00 Ouch, that's nearly three hours to get from one venue to another! First it takes half an hour to get out of Wembley Arena, then the suggested route takes you via two trains with a change at Liverpool Street. It's a perfectly good route, but probably not one you'd have chosen unaided. I wonder if the journey planner has been pre-programmed to keep you off the Jubilee line - they won't want it getting too crowded, so they're sending you via quieter trains.
Sample journey 4: Obscure Norfolk Village to the Olympic Park (for the Basketball) This is a journey my Dad needs to make on the opening weekend.
"An error occured attempting to obtain journey options using the details you have entered." Bad luck Dad, it looks like you live somewhere that the travel planner can't cope with. So let me try that again, starting at your nearest rail station. There should be a direct train from Diss to Stratford.
Leave 08:10 → walk to Diss bus station (20 minutes, 08:30) → take the FirstGroup Olympic Coach towards Northern Transport Mall (3 hours, 11:30) → walk to Northern Spectator Gate (2 minutes, 11:32) → arrive 12:37 So that's a mammoth 4½ hour journey, including 3 hours on a coach. You can already buy yourself a return coach ticket for £25 (saving a fiver because you're over 60). Mysteriously there's no mention whatsoever on the journey planner of the "go by train" option. That would cost only a pound more, but could whisk you down in less than half the time. Alas the rail-booking website is a complete nightmare and, even though there are supposed to be 2012 Games Train Tickets "valid for any train on the date of travel without restriction", I can't find any. Flexibility fail. Bet you take the coach.
Sample journey 5: Lord's to North Greenwich Arena (for the Gymnastics) Just to be different, let's plan this journey by bike (via the quickest route).
Leave 11:45 → cycle 17.4km to North Greenwich Arena Cycle Parking (58 minutes, 12:43) → arrive 14:00 That's less than an hour to cycle across London, but then more than an hour to guarantee entry to the Dome. Not great. On the plus side the website plans your route for you, which is impressive stuff. Except there are no maps. The route is only available as a downloadable GPX file - a GPS-friendly format for those with appropriate gadgets or software skills. How middle class is that? It's great that there'll be cycle parking facilities at all venues, but navigating there won't be as bike-friendly as it ought to be.
Sample journey 6: York to the Olympic Park (for the Hockey) Four hours, this takes, of which two hours is getting to London, six minutes is on the Javelin from St Pancras to Stratford, and the remaining nearly two hours is spent getting to your seat.
Sample journey 7: Wyke Regis to Weymouth (for the Sailing) Even a short journey from the suburbs of Weymouth to the harbourside takes 1 hour 20 minutes - that's 20 minutes to get there by bus and on foot, then (unbelievably) an hour to queue to get into a small park.
Enough examples, you get the idea. Getting to London, or across London, should be easy (unless serious disruption occurs, which it probably will, in which case it's advisable to travel early). Getting into your venue, that could take an hour (but if it doesn't you'll have plenty of time to waste before your session begins). This isn't so much a journey planner as an extra-cautious journey estimator. Summer 2012... it's going to be a long wait.
If you've ever tried to follow the Lea Valley Walk, all the way from Hertford to Limehouse, you'll know there's only one bloody-dangerous bit. The entire 28-mile length boasts a traffic-free path decently segregated from main roads, or at least via a convenient pedestrian crossing, except at the Bow Flyover. At the Bow Flyover the footpath dumps you on the pavement beside a very busy roundabout, and then you're expected to cross four lanes of traffic including two contraflows without a green light to help. It's not fun, neither is it great for those of us who live around here and have no safe way to traverse the interchange. So rejoice, because yesterday the Bow Floating Towpath was opened, and now there's a safe route beneath the main road, along the River Lea [photo]. Hurrah, and about time too. [11 construction photos]
There's already a floatingtowpath a mile to the south, along the Limehouse Cut, and this new path follows a similar model. The walkway's positioned just above the waterline (don't worry, the river's not tidal this far up), and with minimal headroom beneath a broad concrete carriageway. It's dark and could be very oppressive, so a series of always-on lights have been installed along the railings to brighten things up. I'd still think twice about walking this way after dark, but daytimes or dusk make for an atmospheric stroll. [photo]
And there's more. The floating towpath is on the opposite side of the river to the existing towpath north of the flyover. So a new Bow Bridge has been built - a wooden footbridge connecting the two banks at a rather jaunty angle [photo]. That's where most of the £2.4m has gone, I'll bet. The main span is high enough to allow narrowboats (and Water Chariots) underneath, and has four disembarkation points, two at each end.
« southeast: This is the ramp down to the floating towpath. Ideal for cyclists and river-walkers. [photo] « south: A path leads off at top-of-embankment level. It ought to lead to the road alongside, except the road alongside is the A12 dual carriageway. So instead a zigzag path has been cut through a sliver of woodland, probably wiping out a couple of trees in the process, and the undergrowth still hasn't recovered from recent engineering works [photo]. The path ends, fairly swiftly, on the northern edge of the Bow roundabout.
» north: This is the ramp down to the existing Lea towpath. Ideal for cyclists and river-walkers.
» east: This is an utterly pointless set of stairs. It also leads down to the existing Lea towpath, which then ends fairly swiftly on the northern edge of the Bow roundabout. No through traveller need ever use these stairs, because they merely link the northern edge of the Bow roundabout to itself. Still, it's only money, eh?
The combination of floating towpath and footbridge makes for a damned impressive slice of local infrastructure. There are only two main problems - one temporary, one more serious.
1) Firstly, there are absolutely no signs on or around the towpath or bridge. With a plethora of routes leading off every which way, passers-by need to know what leads where or they'll never use the facilities to best effect. Which way under the road, which way up to the roundabout, no clues. The new bridge surprised one cyclist while I was there, and he seemed uncertain which way to go... until I mentioned the floating towpath was freshly opened today, and off he zipped in perfect safety to continue his journey. They've been building this thing for six months, which ought to have been plenty of time to knock up a few signposts, but alas nobody's quite got around to this yet.
2) Secondly, although this pedestrian underpass is a marvellous addition for those travelling beside the river, it's bugger all use for the local community. The flyunder crosses only one arm of the Bow Flyover roundabout, linking the two sides where the fewest people live. Even then it requires a three-minute detour to walk out to the bridge, under the road and back up past the Calor Gas yard, which won't encourage many residents to use it. And the new floating towpath is no help whatsoever for crossing the A12, nor crossing the A11, both of which continue to require pedestrians to nip across streaming traffic unaided. When the Olympics come to Stratford, there'll still be no safe way to walk there from Bow. The benefits of this £2.4m investment are intensely one-dimensional.
But rejoice, because the Lea Valley Walk is finally a joined-up whole. You can walk, jog or cycle the entire length, or just nip down from Fish Island to Bromley-by-Bow Tesco without being mown down by lorries. But do watch out for the mysterious markings on the towpath immediately to the south of the flyover, alongside an old wharf opposite Sugarhouse Lane. The path's particularly wide here, and yet some official signwriter has felt the need to daub inexplicable symbols on the ground in a needless attempt to squeeze everyone down a dogleg lane in the centre [photo]. The graphic shows a parent and child walking into an upside-down cyclist, or maybe a cyclist riding into an upside-down parent and child [photo]. Is this a shared pathway? And if so, why, when a separate segregated lane could so easily have fitted into the additional space alongside. This is jobsworth health and safety of the most frustrating kind, both pointless and ugly. Should you happen to know the person responsible for this eyesore I'd be delighted if you'd steal their paintbrush and snap it in two, so that nobody else's riverside gets tarnished in a similar way.
Hey kids, do you want to come out tonight? We know how boring these long summer nights can be, so our youth club has organised a programme of community events in the town centre to keep you fully entertained. Come on down, join the gang, and maybe we'll go for a takeaway later.
Choose from a variety of activities throughout the evening, and on into the small hours.
Fancy Dress Evening: Our theme tonight is 'Masquerade Ball'. Any fancy headgear will do, so long as your face is masked. A hoodie will do fine - you can always pick up something more fashionable as the evening progresses.
Scavenger Hunt: We've printed out a list of everyday ordinary objects, the sort of things you might find lying around anywhere, and we want to see how many you can find and bring back with you. Top prize is a 42" plasma TV, but there are laptops and new trainers for the runners-up.
Football training: This week it's spot kicks. Come and test out your penalty-taking skills against our plate glass wall.
Pass the Parcel: We're going to play this old party favourite as a full-scale widegame. First we'll find a major department store willing to sponsor all the prizes, then we'll organise a chain of players to remove all their stock one box at a time. Try not to be the one holding the unwrapped smartphone when the music stops.
Fireworks: Once it gets dark, we plan to light up the evening with a few rockets and sparklers. Health & Safety training not essential.
Assertiveness Skills Training: Have you got what it takes to survive on the streets? Can you stand firm in the face of confrontation? Join our live role play event and find out. Police involvement anticipated.
Arts and Crafts: We want to create a new downtown artwork, consisting of scattered boxes, shards of broken glass and flaming pyrotechnics. The prize for the High Street with the best display will be five minutes of primetime exposure on several TV news channels, repeated ad nauseam throughout the day.
Spin the Bottle: And if it smashes when it lands, all the better.
Baseball tournament: A nice solid baseball bat will demolish all opposition, if you've got the balls. Three strikes and they're out.
British Bulldog: You know the rules. Both sides charge at each other, the more violently the better. Anyone who gets grabbed is eliminated, and has to sit out the rest of the game. Winner takes all.
Bonfire and Barbecue: The centrepiece of any good community event is a blazing fire. Location to be confirmed, but a furniture warehouse usually goes up well. Should be a rabble-rousing finale to the night.
RSVP via Blackberry Messenger (or just follow the sound of the police helicopter).
Cambridge's new Guided Busway opened at the weekend. In yesterday's post I waffled a lot about it and got on a bus. In today's post my bus finally reaches the Guided Busway and heads for Huntingdon.
No Entry - Guided Buses only, the roadsign said. And with that my shiny single decker turned left onto the course of the Cambridge & St Ives railway. This minor branch line survived in passenger service until 1970, closed to freight in the 1990s and then entered a period of decay. No demand, no future. But there's plenty of demand now, with the thriving Cambridge Science Park at one end and the dormitory suburb of St Ives at the other. Except on Sundays, obviously. The electronic "next bus" indicator lit up with a sorry list of the day's entire service... "St Ives 11:08, St Ives 13:08, St Ives 16:08". That was going to prove problematic for one couple who arrived at the bus stop just as the bus was pulling up. On the Guided Busway section, all tickets must be bought from a machine before boarding. Press, select operator, press, select destination, press, select ticket type, insert coins... and we were off, leaving them both behind, out of time.
We weren't off very far. The traffic lights along the busway are supposed to switch to green whenever a bus approaches, but the next lights didn't. They stayed red as not-much-traffic crossed the junction ahead, and stayed red, and stayed red. A first day gremlin, to be sure, but we'd still be waiting at that adverse signal if our driver hadn't finally edged out across the road and then sped on. Wheeee! Having a trackway of one's very own allows impressive speeds to be attained, certainly higher than buses usually manage on normal streets. [video]
Suddenly we were out among freshly-harvested fields, heading towards a windmill and a succession of dormitory villages. The people of Histon and Impington were out celebrating, or at least a few of them were, with bunting and a little stall on one corner. There were plenty of passengers waiting on the edge of Oakington, but mostly on the opposite track attempting to head into Cambridge. They'd be lucky. There were even more passengers at Longstanton, where there's a not-quite-finished-yet park and ride, and they'd already filled most of the remaining available seats. I got a bit confused which village was which, because there's no on-board announcement service nor are there any large nameplates at bus stops. Local residents won't suffer such orientation problems, however. Live anywhere out here and the Busway is a public transport godsend... but only so long as you want to travel somewhere the bus actually serves. So it won't be like this every Sunday - most of the locals will go back to their cars after their first day sample journey.
I hopped off at Swavesey, because Swavesey has something in common with Greenwich, Chingford and Peacehaven. It lies precisely on the zero meridian, and I'd heard there was a special monument signifying this geographic location somewhere in the village. And there is, very close to the busway, but it's not a very inspiring marker. A single concrete post, topped by a cheaply-chiselled plaque, commemorating the Swavesey Millennial Celebrations. ITV filmed here as 1999 ticked over into 2000, although goodness knows what they found to fill their airtime. Me, I loved the village store and thatched Post Office down the road, still advertising out front as CONFECTIONER, TOBACCONIST, STATIONER, NEWSAGENT, and selling Minerals, Pipes and Pouches, Library, Views and Fancy Goods.
A few teething problems were evident at Swavesey's newest bus stop. A local family were trying to work out what ticket to buy, for which they needed to know which bus operator was coming next. The timetable said a 'B' was due, the electronic indicator suggested it was 25 minutes away, but whether they needed a Stagecoach or Go Whippet ticket defeated them. The bus turned out to be 1 minute away, by which time no tickets had been purchased, but this driver relented and let them pay on board instead. And Swavesey's traffic lights were playing up too. They kept switching from red to green even when there was no bus in sight, repeatedly halting traffic on the local road to let absolutely nothing pass. Teething problems, it'll pass.
Last stretch of busway ahead - a glorious fenland section with lakes and a nature reserve off to one side. Everybody was waving to our double decker as it swept through. A crowd of ramblers waved, a bloke in a recumbent waved, everyone at the Fen Drayton request stop waved. A bus is a genuine novelty in these parts, out in the middle of what's still fields, even if nobody actually lives here. The cycleway isn't quite ready out here, this is the part that's liable to flooding and "water egress", so there'll be no bikes just yet joining the buses on the new bridge over the Great Ouse.
And then, almost straight away, St Ives. This is where the railway station stood, so this is where they've built a massive Park and Ride to encourage local residents onto the bus. Seems to have worked. Almost everybody aboard my bus alighted here, and those that didn't only hung on a few hundred yards more to the town's bus station, because that's the end of the good bit. Twelve miles in 20 minutes, including stops, that's damned good for a bus. But the next section's damned average. The 'express' bus reverts to 'bog standard', meandering round edge-of-town housing estates in both St Ives and Huntingdon. This is no doubt great for picking up commuters from somewhere near home, but six miles in 30 minutes is never going to attract longer-distance travellers.
Indeed, much is being made of the wholly unimproved journey times that the Busway has brought here. Central Huntingdon to central Cambridge takes roughly as long on the speedy new bus as it did on the old, but now the bit in the middle is faster. Will some Cambridgeshire residents be big winners? Yes. Was the railway hugely faster? Absolutely. Should the council have spent quite so much time and money on a substandard solution to congestion woe? Let's wait and see.
And finally, having reached Huntingdon, I had to have a good look round this old county town too. It didn't take long, because the High Street's mostly shops, but there are some splendid Georgian buildings and a fine Norman church. The town's inordinately proud of its association with Oliver Cromwell (because without him their most famous resident is probably John Major). His tiny old school has become the Cromwell Museum, a fascinating (but very old-school) collection of Puritan memorabilia (amazing hat, sir). The town's stone bridge is even older, linking two separate medieval settlements on opposite banks of the River Great Ouse. "Incorporated 1212" boasts a sign on the Godmanchester side. "Incorporated 1205" retort the good folk of Huntingdon, in a historical ner-ner-ner-ner-ner manner. And then I took the train back to London, because it was quicker than the bus back to Cambridge.
Some transport projects don't run to time or to budget. Edinburgh's doomed tram network is a case in point. But yesterday one such ill-fated project finally crawled its way off the drawing board and into publicservice. I'm talking about the Cambridge Guided Busway, a concrete track linking Cambridge to St Ives along the route of a former railway. The idea is to take vehicle traffic off the busy A14 by encouraging would-be passengers to park and ride. The busway has taken years to agree, years to build, and most recently years to repair. Tracks cracked, car parks were inadequate and one entire section proved over-susceptible to flooding. The council are currently locked in a legal battle with the contractors for delivering substandard infrastructure, and could face a multi-million pound budget overspend if that challenge is unsuccessful. The entire project risked becoming a moneypit fiasco, delivering far fewer benefits than first promised, but somehow finally carried its first passengers on Sunday morning. And I was one of them.
Sunday's not the best day to try to use the Cambridge Guided Busway. There are only twelve buses in each direction, running approximately hourly, which seems a massive underuse of such an expensive new roadway. But that's provincial Sunday services for you, nothing like the massively subsidised routes we Londoners take for granted, because out here in Cambridgeshire the car is still king. The Busway's services are shared by two different bus operators, that's Stagecoach (routes A and B) and local boys Go Whippet (route C). They both run along the central speedy section from Cambridge to St Ives, but have different twiddly bits at each end. To add to the confusion each refuses to take the other operator's tickets, so if you buy a return you can only come back with the same people you went with. There's a smartcard you can buy in advance to get round that, but turn up and go and it's one or the other. Sorry, this isn't going to be at all straight-forward.
When I turned up at Cambridge station on Sunday morning, there were no obvious Busway signs. Ah, hang on, a handful of cheap laminated arrows pointed off down a side-road where workmen were still battling to seal off one lane of traffic with plastic barriers. They'd quarantined the bus shelter so I had to walk further - a luggage-unfriendly distance - to the temporary stop beside a building site. One day this will be Cambridge's new (desirable) residential quarter, but for now the entire area's a bit of a mess. I was early, so I had time to wander down to the fresh stretch of busway to the south. Two parallel concrete tracks, laid so long ago that there are already poppies blooming in the gaps, stretching off for two miles towards Addenbrookes Hopsital. No buses go this far on Sundays, which seems a dreadful waste, but it did mean I could stand in the road in relative safety. Bicycles are directed off down a parallel cycleway, also newly opened yesterday, and while I was here a convoy from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign rode by to test it out. Other vehicles are prevented from gaining access to the Busway thanks to a "car trap", which sounds scary, but is nothing more than a shallow chassis-width pit filled with gravel. But the official buses have little wheels, like stabilisers, which allow them to speed down these tracks with a minimum of steering. Sometime before 7am this morning, this southern stretch will finally get christened.
Back I went to the station bus stop to catch my Route C single decker north. This was one of the Go Whippet services (good because they're doing introductory weekend tickets for only £1, bad because they're only running three times a day). There weren't many of us waiting to board - I counted six Freedom Passes, two kids and only three paying passengers. This is going to be nice and quiet, I thought, as we trundled round the houses into the town centre. But the bus station was rather busier, not least with scores of people piling onto a double decker route B, and various media folk out taking proper photos and recording vox pops. A group of four bus enthusiasts boarded, representing the great and good of the Cambridge Omnibus Society. They chose to spread out and not quite sit next to each other, but one sat next to me, and so I was surrounded by animated conversation as we headed for the suburbs. "Momentous day." "Good loadings on that B." "They're even running a duplicate." "He's only got one reverse light working." If you're local and interested, Tony's promised to do a write up of today's event (with photos) for the next issue of the society's magazine.
There is no guided busway for the first part of the journey. Instead the buses follow normal streets, occasionally with bus lanes, more usually not. On Sundays that's fine, but those who know Cambridge will realise that weekday rush hours will be rather more clogged. The old railway didn't come this way, it branched off the mainline further north, so there's no separate trackway any express bus could follow. It's network imperfections like this which have left some to suggest that a light railway would have been a much better solution, and quite possibly cheaper too. A train could zip from Cambridge station out to the Science Park in four minutes flat, whereas the bus takes up to 20. But the council have stuck with their Guided Busway solution, and there's no chance of the tracks switching back from concrete to iron.
Some parts of London, only tourists go. The foot of the Mall, the plaza outside the Tower, the Trocadero. Keeps them busy, keeps them happy, keeps them out of everybody else's way. But I've stumbled across a new tourist magnet which is quite the ghastliest merchandising experience I've visited in years. On the corner of Leicester Square, where the clock-chimingSwiss Centre used to be. It's the largest sweet shop on the planet. It's M&Ms World. [81 photos]
I couldn't quite believe the scale nor bare-faced cheek of the enterprise when I passed by yesterday. A modern block of dubious architectural quality, with one long curved window decked in multicolour stripes. Come inside, it beckons, we have candy-coated chocolate buttons on four floors. And inside they come.
Here, have a basket. It's a big canvas basket, almost IKEA-sized, because they really want you to walk out of here with a purchase. Perhaps one of that range of fridge magnets, each featuring one of the M&M brand's "spokescandies". These are the characters you'll find everywhere throughout the store - on t-shirts, on clothing, on glassware, on pricey bling, on so-called 'collectibles', even on Union Jack themed ashtrays. No plastic tat is too inane to have these grinning cartoon sweeties imprinted upon it.
It's all pretending to be so terribly British. One of the M&M characters appears dressed up as a full-size knight, another as a guardsman. How about buying a Union Jack teapot as a souvenir of your stay in this great capital (including Red, Yellow, Blue and Green splashed unapologetically around the side)? And yet M&Ms were unknown in London until 1980. They're about as British as a Subway sandwich or a Starbucks muffin. How much more appropriate it would be to have a SmartiesWorld here, based on the much-loved Rowntree confectionery dating back to Victorian times. Except Smarties are now owned by Nestlé, and packaged in hexagonal tubes, and made in Germany instead of York, so maybe not.
The merchandising may be extreme (Red and Yellow, thumbs aloft, driving a model car... anyone?) but the core products throughout the store are the chocolates. They must cost almost nothing to manufacture, but here they've been parcelled up in a variety of novelty packets to encourage you to shell out. A gift box of all greens, £6.95. A Christmas tree or Hallowe'en pumpkin-shaped package, £7.95. And most profitable of all, a plastic wine bottle filled to the cork with beans, plus a 'Happy Birthday' label on the outside, £14.95. If tooth decay and obesity are what your friends crave, why not buy them a gift from M&Ms World?
Entrance to the main landing is through the middle of a Routemaster bus. Nothing says "woo, London" to a tourist like a Routemaster bus. But this one's been carved out to forming a welcoming arch, with the entire centre section of its lower deck removed. You can't climb to the unsupported top deck, but you can stand in the sealed-off stairwell and get your photo taken. Everyone's got their phones out, because taking photos is what you do in a shop more spectacle than substance. Have your picture taken beside four fibreglass chocolate buttons in the basement. Snap your grinning family beside the rainbow wall of pick and mix. Video the 'mixologists' assembling M&M party bags in the pretend laboratory. Or muster in groups and take pictures of the pictures on the stairs, an act so collectively vacuous that I audibly gasped as I walked by.
Various 'entertainments' are provided for visitors to help give the impression that this is a place of cultural worth, not simply a shop. There's a special interactive booth where you can wave your hands in the air until a video screen announces your personality-matched M&Ms colour. There's a steampunk videotube with several buttons beneath, allowing you to switch between security cameras and snoop on customers in the other parts of the store. And... well, no, actually it's mostly four floors of shop. A more vacuous shallow marketing concept, brought so completely to life, it would be hard to find.
The store was absolutely rammed on Saturday, the four floors teeming, plus queues at all the tills. Mars have done their research, they know that what visitors to London want is something familiar, something bubbly, something full of souvenirs for the folks back home. It's got mammoth success written all over it, it really has. But I couldn't help shuddering at some new commercial debasement round every corner, as the smiling crowds milled all around me.
Watch out for the cheery cheesy staff, seemingly employed direct from introducing links on the Disney Channel. As I left the store they were dancing on the stairs to the Macarena, then whooped with delight when that segued into Whigfield's Saturday Night. If that thought fills you with joy, congratulations, you're target audience. If not, I'd keep well clear. Because some parts of London, only tourists go. And M&Ms World is so very much for them, not for us.
My Open House London programme arrived in the post yesterday. That's the annual architectural weekend where 750 London buildings open their doors for free, this year taking place on 17th and 18th September. Pay up front and the organisers send you the full brochure in advance, giving one full weekend to plan where you'd like to visit before the booking system goes live on Monday. As usual there's a mix of "turn up on the day" and "pre-booking essential" tours, and tickets for some of the latter disappear like hot cakes the minute the website opens. That's 10am on Monday morning - or indeed a couple of minutes before, as I discovered last year when many of the prime tickets had already been snapped up by the time the official starting gun fired. It pays to be ready, mouse-finger primed, if you don't want to miss out.
I shall be missing out this year. Even though I've got my £6.50 programme in advance, I shall be in a terribly important meeting on Monday at 10am where it won't be possible to say "oh excuse me, could I pop out and book a tour up an iconic London skyscraper?" Bugger. Still, you might appreciate knowing a few highlights to look out for, so that you can nip in and swipe the top tickets hours before I can get near a computer. I hate you all already, obviously.
10 interesting-looking pre-book-only Open House London tours (now clickable) » Underground Bunker, Neasden (Sat): Tours of Churchill's secret suburban concrete hideaway (I've been) » BT Tower (Sat, Sun): Dead rare chance to visit the rotating restaurant at the top (good news, this one's a ballot) » King's Cross station (Sun): Tours of the newly-restored Eastern Range buildings (75 tickets only) » London Bridge station (Sat, Sun): Tours of the mid-18thC vaults, before they're restored and opened to the public (60 tickets only) » St Pancras Renaissance Hotel (Sat): Get inside the famous Midland Grand, recently restored and reopened (120 tickets only) » Tower 42 (Sat): When it opened, the Nat West Tower was London's tallest skyscraper (ridiculously exclusive - 40 tickets only) » Boat Tours from Greenwich Pier (Sat, Sun, 2pm): Two engineering-led river tours, one into town, the other out to Tilbury (100-ish seats per Clipper) » Trellick Tower (Sun): Erno Goldfinger's monumental social housing block (112 tickets only) » BBC Television Centre (Sun): Go look round the 50-year-old telly crucible before Auntie sells it (I've been) » 55 Broadway (Sat, Sun): Go look round the Art Deco home of London Transport before TfL sells it (I went last year) (booking opens Monday 8th August, 10am)
Ian has the complete pre-booking list available here. (thanks Ian)
Well, what a lot of interesting Olympic news there was yesterday. You wouldn't believe the parking restrictions there are going to be in central London next summer. Obviously it'll be far worse out east, but it's only when travel hassle hits where rich people live that journalists sit up and take notice. And then there's the Olympic wrap, which will now be draped around the perimeter of the Stadium courtesy of an American chemical giant. It seems London couldn't afford £7m, which is less than 0.1% of the Olympic budget, so my local neighbourhood gets to have a sponsored hoarding on its skyline for six months before the Games begin. It's enough to make you...
"He does go on a bit, doesn't he?"
"I know, it's always the bloody Olympics with him now, isn't it? I remember the golden days when he used to write about obscure railway branch lines and kittens, but now it's Seb Coe's bloody circus day in day out. I mean, it's not like we care. He lives on top of the bloody place so it's like bread and butter to him, whereas out where I live we're not even getting a wave of the bloody torch."
"Actually it's not quite as bad as that. I've been doing a survey."
"Seriously? Sheesh, you're as depressingly nerdy as he is. Go on, what does your survey say?"
"I've analysed his blog for the last 100 days, which is back roughly as far as Easter, and totted up how many days of posts there have been on various subjects. Totals may not add up to 100% because sometimes he writes about more than one thing, and because statistics are inaccurate like that."
diamond geezer - survey of the last 100 days
Transport - 30 days ... trains 13 days ... buses 9 days ... cycling 5 days ... canals 2 days ... cablecars 1 day The Olympics - 21 days Reporting back on London events - 13 days Local stuff (Tower Hamlets & Bow) - 13 days The rest of London - 13 days ... including 5 days on Havering Around the UK (not London) - 11 days Abroad (i.e. Iceland) - 9 days Self-referential musings - 7 days People who send PR emails are wazzocks - 5 days Other stuff (non-geographical) - 5 days Cupcakes - 1 day Kittens - 0 days
"See, I knew there was too much bloody Olympics. It's like one day in every five, which is one day too much if you ask me. And it's only going to get worse as the bloody Olympics get bloody closer. Wake me up in 2013."
"Yes, but actually he's far more tedious when it comes to transport. Three days in ten he's wittering on about public transport, the loser, like none of the rest of us actually have cars. I mean, do people still ride buses? You can almost smell the body odour as he writes."
"Well, I thought he wrote about East London more than 13% of the time. What's happening down Bow Road? Like I bloody care."
"And no kittens. I'm not coming back until there are more kittens."
...so with only 357 days to go, London holds is breath to see what impact the Games will have on our commute, our city and our future.
I already know this. Sky have been telling me for months. And yet, as I've mentioned before, Sky seem unable to stop telling me.
Their latest advertising wheeze is a poster in the entrance hall to my block of flats. Imagine an A4 piece of cardboard, designed to be propped up via a rear hinge - like a photoframe on your granny's dresser. "Your block is ready for Sky TV", it says. Underneath there's a picture of a grinning woman with long blonde hair and unfeasible hips. My first thought was that she ought to be pinned up in a 1980s pub with packets of peanuts attached to her nether regions. On closer inspection no, too many clothes, more like an American advert for shampoo and teeth whitening. And on much closer inspection no, an advert for "Britain & Ireland's Next Top Model", coming soon on Sky Living. I was not hooked. [ring 0800 xxx 7254]
At the bottom of the poster, stuck over a frilly ballroom dress, are two separate giveaways. "Please take a card", says one, bearing the news "You can now get Sky TV in your flat". Yes, I know. Underneath the slogan are printed three tiny photos of exclusive Sky programmes. Their titles are written in a font so tiny that I can only decipher one of them, and even then the title means nothing to me because I don't have Sky. Somebody's placed rather a lot of these cards in the box, two for every flat in my block, which seems like overkill. Some marketing team somewhere, it seems, is getting desperate. [ring 0800 xxx 7194]
And then there's "Please take a magnet". I had to double-check to be sure I'd read that properly, but yes, that's what it says. Please take a small square fridge magnet, bedecked with the slogan "Get Sky TV in your flat", plus a freephone number, plus some smallprint at the bottom which says the price is going up in September. These are fridge magnets devoid of any creative charm or artistic merit whatsoever - nothing you'd want to keep. And yet Sky are hoping I'll take one and slap it on my refrigerator as a permanent reminder of my flat's Sky-readiness. Afraid not, guys. Again the box contains far more flimsy giveaways than there are flats in my block. Some marketing team somewhere is getting more than desperate. [ring 0800 xxx 7205]
It took me a while to spot that the poster, the cards and the magnets each have a different freephone number. Same switchboard on the other end, I'll bet, but the marketing team want to know whether it was the grinning lady, the tiny card or the el-cheapo magnet that drew your attention. Only £240 a year, guv'nor. Can we sign you up now?
Alas our entrance hall's not best suited to propping up a display card like this, so the Sky representative had sought alternative means of bringing the offer to our attention. He'd brought along huge gobbets of blutak and affixed his poster to the wall, opposite the main entrance, to ensure maximum visibility. It's such a prime spot that this is where our block's fire instructions are posted, or at least they normally are. What the alarm sounds like, where to exit, that sort of very-important information. But none of this bothered Mr Sky, who'd removed the sheet of fire instructions so that his promotional woman could go up in their place, then dumped our list in another corner of the hall. Priorities, eh?
I'm a little unnerved as to how the Sky representative gained access to our flats in the first place. We don't have a special button out the front which says "advertisers, please let yourself in and scatter your bits around". I can only assume he was in the block fitting up some Formula 1 addict with satellite telly, and thought he'd vandalise our noticeboard on the way out. Or maybe somebody let him in, thinking he was a kind and gentle soul, whereas in fact he was a commission-hungry peddler.
My block is ready for Sky TV. But their poster is ready for the recycling.
"Five new housing neighbourhoods that will be built on the future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park were named yesterday following a public competition. Almost 2,000 people entered the Olympic Park Legacy Company’s ‘Your Park, Your Place’ competition which gave people the chance to shape the future of the Park. Suggestions were based on the future designs of the neighbourhoods, the Olympic Games itself and the historical uses of the various areas such as gunpowder mills and former factories.
On Tuesday 2nd August 2011, a judging panel met at the View Tube overlooking the Olympic Park in Stratford to pick the winning names. They are..."
Area 1 ("North of Athletes Village") – Chobham Manor Suggested by Gary Davidson-Guild from Lambeth, London, as a reference to Chobham Manor and the Manor Garden Allotments. A bit of history for you. The Manor of Chobham, to the north of Stratford, dates back to the 14th century. The 100 acre estate was bought in 1343 by a certain Thomas de Chobham (who presumably came from Surrey), then passed through the hands of a series of other landowners. In the 1850s the Great Eastern Railway bought up most of the Chobham estate for works and sidings, while the remainder was used for housing (along what is now Chobham Road). In 1900 the Manor Garden Allotments were established, bequeathed to the local population by the director of Barings Bank, until the Olympics came along and decided that "in perpetuity" ended in 2007. Historical/geographical accuracy: Chobham Manor - spot on. Manor Garden - nice touch, but the new neighbourhood won't be built on the site of the allotments.
Area 2 ("Next to Hackney Wick") – East Wick Suggested by Oliver O'Brien from Hackney, London, because it is east of Hackney Wick. Well you can't argue with that. What shall we call the Olympic neighbourhood to the east of Hackney Wick? I know, let's call it East Wick. Congratulations to Ollie, a proper local resident, and long-time reader of this blog. Ollie's a geographer by trade, so is dead chuffed to have got his name onto London's road map (in perpetuity). To be fair, he won't be the only person to have suggested East Wick, but the OPLC's rules awarded the naming credit to the first person to submit an entry. I suspect far more people suggested the single word Eastwick, because that has a frisson of Jack Nicholson about it, but no doubt the naming committee wanted to steer clear of overt witchcraft. Geographical accuracy:unfaultable.
Area 3 ("Next to Old Ford") – Sweetwater Suggested by Kevin Murtagh from Reading, as a reference to the area’s former sweet factory, along with its waterways. 'Sweetwater' could almost be a subliminal advert for Coca Cola, but rest assured that it's not. The sweetfactory in question belonged to Clarke, Nicolls & Coombs - better known as Clarnico. Founded in 1872, the business specialised in confectionery and jams, and grew steadily to become the largest sweet factory in post-war Britain. Clarnico started out on Wallis Road (close to where Hackney Wick station is today), then spreadeast to the opposite side of the canal (where onesinglewarehousehassurvived the Olympic bulldozers). Then Trebor Bassett bought them up, and the name now exists only as a brand of peppermint creams. The name Sweetwater's not unique, by the way. A town in Texas has that name, as did the first band to play at Woodstock in 1969. Historical/geographical accuracy: Misplaced. All my research suggests that the Clarnico factory was part of area 2, but never part of Area 3.
Area 4 ("Next to Stratford City") – Marshgate Wharf Suggested by Stephen Davies from St Albans, as a reference to the original marshes in the area. Long before the Olympics came along, the lonely road up the Lower Lea Valley was called Marshgate Lane. Legend has it that Queen Matilda once lost her horses here while trying to cross the flooded river, and the adjacent land's long been too sodden for settlement. But a concerted programme of drainage allowed a variety of factories to grow up, culminating in the Marshgate Lane Trading Estate, most of which now lies beneath the Olympic Stadium. Rather further to the south there used to be a Marshgate Lock on the Bow Back Rivers, at least until 1935, where boats would have tied up at Bow Wharf to serve the industries alongside. But the combined name 'Marshgate Wharf' is a clear nod to the future, and the 21st century Water City that urban planners hope to create between the Stadium and Westfield. Historical/geographical accuracy: Marshgate - yes. Marshgate Lock & Bow Wharf - no, definitely part of Area 5 instead.
Area 5 ("Around Pudding Mill") – Pudding Mill Suggested by Dave Arquati from Wandsworth, London, after the area’s historic connection to the Pudding Mill River. Wahey, another blog reader names an Olympic neighbourhood. Well done Dave, for being the first person to send in the most blindingly obvious name of the lot. What shall we call the area "Around Pudding Mill"? I know, "Pudding Mill". But that's fine because there really was a windmill, in precisely this location, dating back to the 12th century. It apparently resembled an upturned pudding so earned the nickname of Pudding Mill, and the half-mile-long channel alongside became the Pudding Mill River. The mill vanished in the 1830s when the railways arrived, while the river's been filled in much more recently to make way for the Olympic Stadium. Even better, Dave has suggested a name which means that the DLR station at Pudding Mill Lane can keep its name post-Games, rather than having to rebrand, thereby saving TfL lots of money. Historical/geographical accuracy: perfect.
London Prepares Hadleigh Farm Mountain Bike International Lessons Learned
Why run an Olympic test event, such as Sunday's Mountain Bike International at Hadleigh Farm? It's not an essential part of the international sporting schedule. It's not the best way of keeping thousands of Essex residents entertained. It's not specifically to give the world's top bikers advance experience of next year's Olympic course. It's not cheap to organise, that's for sure. But it is essential to run through your procedures in full to ensure that nothing goes spectacularly cringeworthily wrong when the eyes of the world are upon you. Sunday's race was as much about the spectators as the riders. How did we behave, what did we misunderstand, how might our movements have been more efficient? LOCOG had several observers in place scrutinising every move and making notes, and they'll be reporting back to help make improvements for this and every other Olympic event. Here's what I learned.
Transport: Most Olympic events will be fairly straight-forward to travel to. But the mountain biking takes place in a field, on the south Essex coast, halfway between two railway stations, down the end of a narrow lane. Now there's a challenge. Very-local residents were encouraged to walk. Fairly-local residents were asked to park-and-ride. And for those of us not-very-local-at-all, they laid on a bus shuttle from Leigh-on-Sea. The operation was 2012-sized, for proper practice, which meant queueing chicanes of unnecessary size and a double decker every five minutes, full or not. There was plenty of bikerack-space too, which was nice, especially when the recommended bike route from here to Hadleigh was a bonkers coastal detour via Benfleet. Nobody checked our tickets, although the smiling volunteers did turn back an elderly couple who wondered if this was the courtesy bus to "the car boot sale". Off we went up the hill, past numerous signs warning that vehicles in contravention of parking restrictions would be towed away, and the occasional closed-off road. There were no segregated Olympic Lanes, but the arrangements were a first indication of how local residents will need to work around imposed traffic restrictions. All was well until we reached Hadleigh, at which point the bus turned left into a fallow field. Contractors had laid a temporary load-bearing surface across the grass, a bit like a mountain bike course for buses, and we teetered oh-so slowly to the drop-off point on the far side. A fairly swift transfer, all told, but no expense wasted on the bit at the end.
Getting in: And did the buses drop us off by the entrance? Of course not. They had to terminate early so drivers could escape up a single-track lane, leaving us an undulating 500m walk to the field of play. Weren't the volunteers posted along the way friendly, forever wishing us a good day on the way in (and a smiley thankyou on the way out). A big thumbs up to the Salvation Army, on whose land the mountain biking is taking place, and who'd positioned a brass band in a tent to entertain passing spectators. It's little quirks like this that'll make London's Olympics special, as opposed (say) to the flawless perfection of Beijing. Eventually we reached the security checkpoint, where I was expecting a mini Spanish Inquisition. Not so. I'd deliberately brought a bag, within which I'd deliberately brought a packed lunch and a bottle of water, to test out the list of restricted items we'd been sent in advance. But nobody even summoned me over to take a look inside, let alone rummage in every concealed pocket. I could have been carrying kitchen knives, fireworks and a vuvuzela for all anybody cared, whereas in fact I was importing nothing worse than two pork pies and some sandwiches. Staff simply wrapped a cheap green security bracelet around my arm and sent me inside smiling. I'm sure 2012 friskdowns will be rather more severe but, for any potential troublemaker, this was a walk in the park.
Orientation: On the way into the site, each spectator was given a handy guide to the event to help them find their way around. A single sheet of folded A3, sturdy paper, brand-friendly design. On the back was a schedule and a bit about the venue, open up for a welcome and a bit about the sport, and then (very usefully) a list of all hundred-or-so riders due to be taking part. I could have done with a bit more about the rules of the event, for example the "80% rule" which forces riders to retire if they fall more than 80% of a lap behind the leading rider, as this turned out to be crucial to understanding how the race played out in its later stages. But this was an ideal cheap-to-produce souvenir of the day, both resilient and informative, and hopefully something that'll be common to all 2012 Olympic events. And there was a map included too, reproduced here, which helped us find our way around the sprawling course. It suffered a little from being too schematic - I understand the layout perfectly now, but didn't when I first arrived. Only four of the course's major obstacles were highlighted, so when the race commentator started going on about events at "Ollie's Leap" I had absolutely no idea where that was. It was great to have the map reproduced at key points around the course, but a simple "You are here" would have helped enormously. I had six hours to wander the course yet still missed several points of interest. Visitors in 2012 will have less than half that, and are bound to overlook even more.
Food: Bet you're expecting this pre-Olympic event would be serviced by McDonalds, the official junkfood of the 2012 Games. Not so. The organisers had hired catering trucks of the kind you'd find at a fair or festival, nothing branded, mostly British. Out by Deane's Drop a Hog Roast trailer serving sustainable Norfolk pork. Down in the hollow one Fish and Chips, one Tapas. And up top a baguette production line in a truck and a coffee dispensary. Most of the day this worked fine, sufficient to service those who'd not brought any sustenance with them. But at lunchtime, between the women's and men's races, the food supply chain quickly congealed. Most of the spectators were up on the hill, where the only edible option was French sticks, and the girls behind the counter couldn't cope. They doled out meaty bread so slowly that one queue barely shuffled forward at all, while the other would have been longer if only it hadn't extended into the portaloos. The poor lad in front of me waited stoically for 40 minutes just to buy a £1.90 bottle of water, then rushed off to drink it before the first race started. Lesson learned: it's all very well providing alternative food choices at an outdoor event, but if that choice is five minutes walk down a sweaty hill, spectators simply aren't going to go there. If nothing else, a few mobile trolleys selling bottled drinks to the masses would have been a life saver.
Communication: A mountain bike event is incredibly difficult to watch, except on TV. The riders spread out around the entire course, so the action is invariably happening somewhere that you're not. So all credit to the presentational team who managed to keep everyone fully informed, throughout the day, with a commentary that only occasionally descended into cheese. Hire them again next year. And a special well done to whoever installed the loudspeakers, because every word was crystal clear almost everywhere around the site. Who needs TV when you've got live action plus commentary?
Accessibility: In the centre of the course, at the summit of the highest steepest hillock, I passed a mum on a mobility scooter. That's a big tick in the accessibility box.
Trust: Most encouragingly of all, everywhere spectators went, we were trusted. We could easily have crossed the boundary tape, anywhere, but we didn't. At crossing points when the whistles blew and the chains came across, we held back. Several security teams stood ready, but weren't needed. The handful of mounted police observed, but never intruded. It all contributed to Hadleigh Farm being a free-wheeling celebration, not a regimented lockdown. If LOCOG can get this balance right at every event in 2012, we're in for a treat.
London Prepares Hadleigh Farm Mountain Bike International Sunday 31st July 2011
If you want to get your Olympics right, you need to practice. In particular, if you're an Organising Comittee and all your venues are ready a year in advance, you can practice early. The first paid-for Olympic practice event took place yesterday, in south Essex, at the Hadleigh Farm mountain bike course. A field of top international experts came to show off their cycling prowess, to win medals and to test the system at the same time. You could have bought tickets, there were 5000 available, and they weren't snapped up quite as fast as the real tickets for 2012. And what a great day out, possibly even better than the proper Olympic race days next year.
Reasons why it was great, number 1: the course
OK, so there are no mountains in Essex. Hadleigh Farm doesn't even have an especially high hill. But it does have undulating contours a-plenty, and that's all the designers needed to wring a mountain-like course out of a patch of farmland. They've devised a compact three mile circuit that twists and turns (and in one place crosses over itself), but still with sufficient climbs and falls to mimic a typical mountain ascent. The rocks along the way aren't natural, they've been imported and aligned to create a variety of major and minor obstacles. Some are merely minor jolting hiccups, others sheer tumbling descents. The organisers invited local schools to name some of the most interesting features, hence the sheerest drop has been designated the "Leap of Faith" and the hillside scramble is "Deane's Drop". Most major obstacles offer a choice of paths - the main, slightly more challenging, route, and an alternative nicknamed the 'chicken run'. I'll not name the overwhelmed British rider who even stopped and walked down the chicken run, because that would be impolite, but let's just say she abjectly failed to complete the course. [the course][map]
Reasons why it was great, number 2: spectator-friendly
If a mountain bike course went up a proper mountain, you'd have trouble spectating. Getting up to the interesting bits would be difficult, and then each biker would only whizz past once. Devise a circuit around some fields instead and suddenly watching the action gets a whole lot easier. The Hadleigh Farm course is three miles long, and the cyclists go round six or seven times. This gives ample opportunity to stay in one location and watch everyone pass by repeatedly, or else to walk round the entire course over the space of an hour and a half and observe the action at all points of interest. Lap 1 you could be up on the escarpment (where the VIP grandstand is going to be), lap 2 standing at the foot of Deane's Drop (waiting for the British cyclist to fall off and crack his head), lap 3 up a grassy slope beside the zigzags (watching lots of very fit athletes panting furiously), etc etc. It's precisely the same model that's being used for the London 2012 marathon - a compact circuit course is both cheaper to operate and easier to follow.
Reasons why it was great, number 3: getting close to the action
At many sporting events, say a major football match, you're held back and forced to watch tiny stickmen running about on some distant field of play. Not here at Hadleigh Farm. Here we were kept back by nothing thicker than a strip of plastic tape, so when a cyclist sped by we were right beside them. Every last bead of sweat, every pert lycra-clad backside disappearing over a precipice, all perfectly visible (and perfectly camera-able). It was almost as if the spectator had the upper hand, with ten designated crossing points allowing the public to trespass officially on the course while the race was underway. A series of whistles followed the race round the track, warning that the next biker was approaching, and only then was each crossing point chained off. Other than that, go where you like, explore where you like, spectate where you like. I liked.
Reasons why it was great, number 4a: Only 5000 spectators
They didn't want to overload the test event, so only 5000 tickets were up for sale. Come August 2012 there'll be 20000 paid-for spectators out on the course, and with hangers-on the total number could be considerably higher. So we lucky guinea pigs enjoyed four times the space that the proper attendees will get. No nasty queueing bottlenecks at key junctions, no jostling for a decent camera position at the foot of an incline, just acres of space for one and all.
Reasons why it was great, number 4b: two races
Only four international events are scheduled to take place at Hadleigh Farm. Two are part of the Olympics next summer, the women's event on the Saturday and the men's on the final Sunday. Attend either of these and you'll see only one race, plus a bit of practising, lasting two hours max. The other two international events took place yesterday, and I watched them both. I got to spend the whole day on an Essex hillside - gates opened at nine, carriages at four. OK, so this wasn't the Olympics proper, but I reckon yesterday was best value.
Reasons why it was great, number 5: expert riders
I'd have enough difficulty riding a bike to the shops, so I have enormous admiration for anyone who can ride non-stop for an hour and three-quarters whilst ascending the equivalent of Ben Nevis. The women's race took place first, in the morning, with a field of approximately three dozen careering round the course like it was second nature. They dropped over the Leap of Faith with aplomb, sweated seamlessly up "The Breathtaker" and earned applause from the crowd wherever they passed. First place eventually went to Catharine Pendrel of Canada, who finished quite a long way ahead of riders from the USA and France. The men's race was even more one-sided, with reigning Olympic champion Julien Absalon storming forward from the beginning so that the outcome was never in any doubt whatsoever. Greater leg-power, faster speeds, more laps - the men's race certainly showcased the course to best effect. Only at the very end did the three medal winners remove their helmets and reveal the grinning athletes beneath, to much adulation from the assembled public. [results]
Reasons why it was great, number 6: the weather
Blimey the weather was good yesterday. Pure blue skies and the sun beating down throughout, enough to turn anyone without sunblock a lobstery shade of red. I'm very surprised to see that the temperature only reached 21 degrees, it felt much roastier than that, but a cooling breeze off the estuary helped keep sunstroke at bay for most. The fine weather generated a slightly-lethargic but celebratory mood throughout, and even made the backdrop of CanveyIsland look appealing. It would have been a very different day after heavy rain, all muddy quagmires and dripping spectators, and maybe that's what August 2012 will bring. But we event-testers got nigh perfect conditions to watch true experts in two epic international contests.
Mountain biking in Essex? They laughed when it was first suggested. But well done LOCOG, case proven.
Olympic update
But rejoice, because the Lea Valley Walk is finally a joined-up whole. You can walk, jog or cycle the entire length, or just nip down from Fish Island to Bromley-by-Bow Tesco without being mown down by lorries. But do watch out for the mysterious markings on the towpath immediately to the south of the flyover, alongside an old wharf opposite Sugarhouse Lane. The path's particularly wide here, and yet some official signwriter has felt the need to daub inexplicable symbols on the ground in a needless attempt to squeeze everyone down a dogleg lane in the centre [photo]. The graphic shows a parent and child walking into an upside-down cyclist, or maybe a cyclist riding into an upside-down parent and child [photo]. Is this a shared pathway? And if so, why, when a separate segregated lane could so easily have fitted into the additional space alongside. This is jobsworth health and safety of the most frustrating kind, both pointless and ugly. Should you happen to know the person responsible for this eyesore I'd be delighted if you'd steal their paintbrush and snap it in two, so that nobody else's riverside gets tarnished in a similar way.
No Entry - Guided Buses only, the roadsign said. And with that my shiny single decker turned left onto the course of the Cambridge & St Ives railway. This minor branch line survived in passenger service until 1970, closed to freight in the 1990s and then entered a period of decay. No demand, no future. But there's plenty of demand now, with the thriving Cambridge Science Park at one end and the dormitory suburb of St Ives at the other. Except on Sundays, obviously. The electronic "next bus" indicator lit up with a sorry list of the day's entire service... "St Ives 11:08, St Ives 13:08, St Ives 16:08". That was going to prove problematic for one couple who arrived at the bus stop just as the bus was pulling up. On the Guided Busway section, all tickets must be bought from a machine before boarding. Press, select operator, press, select destination, press, select ticket type, insert coins... and we were off, leaving them both behind, out of time.
Suddenly we were out among freshly-harvested fields, heading towards a windmill and a succession of dormitory villages. The people of Histon and Impington were out celebrating, or at least a few of them were, with bunting and a little stall on one corner. There were plenty of passengers waiting on the edge of Oakington, but mostly on the opposite track attempting to head into Cambridge. They'd be lucky. There were even more passengers at Longstanton, where there's a not-quite-finished-yet park and ride, and they'd already filled most of the remaining available seats. I got a bit confused which village was which, because there's no on-board announcement service nor are there any large nameplates at bus stops. Local residents won't suffer such orientation problems, however. Live anywhere out here and the Busway is a public transport godsend... but only so long as you want to travel somewhere the bus actually serves. So it won't be like this every Sunday - most of the locals will go back to their cars after their first day sample journey.
And then, almost straight away, St Ives. This is where the railway station stood, so this is where they've built a massive Park and Ride to encourage local residents onto the bus. Seems to have worked. Almost everybody aboard my bus alighted here, and those that didn't only hung on a few hundred yards more to the town's bus station, because that's the end of the good bit. Twelve miles in 20 minutes, including stops, that's damned good for a bus. But the next section's damned average. The 'express' bus reverts to 'bog standard', meandering round edge-of-town housing estates in both St Ives and Huntingdon. This is no doubt great for picking up commuters from somewhere near home, but six miles in 30 minutes is never going to attract longer-distance travellers.
Some transport projects don't run to time or to budget. Edinburgh's doomed tram network is a case in point. But yesterday one such ill-fated project finally crawled its way off the drawing board and into public service. I'm talking about the Cambridge Guided Busway, a concrete track linking Cambridge to St Ives along the route of a former railway. The idea is to take vehicle traffic off the busy A14 by encouraging would-be passengers to park and ride. The busway has taken years to agree, years to build, and most recently years to repair. Tracks cracked, car parks were inadequate and one entire section proved over-susceptible to flooding. The council are currently locked in a legal battle with the contractors for delivering substandard infrastructure, and could face a multi-million pound budget overspend if that challenge is unsuccessful. The entire project risked becoming a moneypit fiasco, delivering far fewer benefits than first promised, but somehow finally carried its first passengers on Sunday morning. And I was one of them.
When I turned up at Cambridge station on Sunday morning, there were no obvious Busway signs. Ah, hang on, a handful of cheap laminated arrows pointed off down a side-road where workmen were still battling to seal off one lane of traffic with plastic barriers. They'd quarantined the bus shelter so I had to walk further - a luggage-unfriendly distance - to the temporary stop beside a building site. One day this will be Cambridge's new (desirable) residential quarter, but for now the entire area's a bit of a mess. I was early, so I had time to wander down to the fresh stretch of busway to the south. Two parallel concrete tracks, laid so long ago that there are already poppies blooming in the gaps, stretching off for two miles towards Addenbrookes Hopsital. No buses go this far on Sundays, which seems a dreadful waste, but it did mean I could stand in the road in relative safety. Bicycles are directed off down a parallel cycleway, also newly opened yesterday, and while I was here a convoy from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign rode by to test it out. Other vehicles are prevented from gaining access to the Busway thanks to a "car trap", which sounds scary, but is nothing more than a shallow chassis-width pit filled with gravel. But the official buses have little wheels, like stabilisers, which allow them to speed down these tracks with a minimum of steering. Sometime before 7am this morning, this southern stretch will finally get christened.
Back I went to the station bus stop to catch my Route C single decker north. This was one of the Go Whippet services (good because they're doing introductory weekend tickets for only £1, bad because they're only running three times a day). There weren't many of us waiting to board - I counted six Freedom Passes, two kids and only three paying passengers. This is going to be nice and quiet, I thought, as we trundled round the houses into the town centre. But the bus station was rather busier, not least with scores of people piling onto a double decker route B, and various media folk out taking proper photos and recording vox pops. A group of four bus enthusiasts boarded, representing the great and good of the Cambridge Omnibus Society. They chose to spread out and not quite sit next to each other, but one sat next to me, and so I was surrounded by animated conversation as we headed for the suburbs. "Momentous day." "Good loadings on that B." "They're even running a duplicate." "He's only got one reverse light working." If you're local and interested, Tony's promised to do a write up of today's event (with photos) for the next issue of the society's magazine.
I couldn't quite believe the scale nor bare-faced cheek of the enterprise when I passed by yesterday. A modern block of dubious architectural quality, with one long curved window decked in multicolour stripes. Come inside, it beckons, we have candy-coated chocolate buttons on four floors. And inside they come.
The merchandising may be extreme (Red and Yellow, thumbs aloft, driving a model car... anyone?) but the core products throughout the store are the chocolates. They must cost almost nothing to manufacture, but here they've been parcelled up in a variety of novelty packets to encourage you to shell out. A gift box of all greens, £6.95. A Christmas tree or Hallowe'en pumpkin-shaped package, £7.95. And most profitable of all, a plastic wine bottle filled to the cork with beans, plus a 'Happy Birthday' label on the outside, £14.95. If tooth decay and obesity are what your friends crave, why not buy them a gift from M&Ms World?
Various 'entertainments' are provided for visitors to help give the impression that this is a place of cultural worth, not simply a shop. There's a special interactive booth where you can wave your hands in the air until a video screen announces your personality-matched M&Ms colour. There's a steampunk videotube with several buttons beneath, allowing you to switch between security cameras and snoop on customers in the other parts of the store. And... well, no, actually it's mostly four floors of shop. A more vacuous shallow marketing concept, brought so completely to life, it would be hard to find.
"Five new housing neighbourhoods that will be built on the future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park were named yesterday following a public competition. Almost 2,000 people entered the Olympic Park Legacy Company’s ‘Your Park, Your Place’ competition which gave people the chance to shape the future of the Park. Suggestions were based on the future designs of the neighbourhoods, the Olympic Games itself and the historical uses of the various areas such as gunpowder mills and former factories.
Area 3 ("Next to Old Ford") – Sweetwater
Transport: Most Olympic events will be fairly straight-forward to travel to. But the mountain biking takes place in a field, on the south Essex coast, halfway between two railway stations, down the end of a narrow lane. Now there's a challenge. Very-local residents were encouraged to walk. Fairly-local residents were asked to park-and-ride. And for those of us not-very-local-at-all, they laid on a bus shuttle from Leigh-on-Sea. The operation was 2012-sized, for proper practice, which meant queueing chicanes of unnecessary size and a double decker every five minutes, full or not. There was plenty of bikerack-space too, which was nice, especially when the recommended bike route from here to Hadleigh was a bonkers coastal detour via Benfleet. Nobody checked our tickets, although the smiling volunteers did turn back an elderly couple who wondered if this was the courtesy bus to "the car boot sale". Off we went up the hill, past numerous signs warning that vehicles in contravention of parking restrictions would be towed away, and the occasional closed-off road. There were no segregated Olympic Lanes, but the arrangements were a first indication of how local residents will need to work around imposed traffic restrictions. All was well until we reached Hadleigh, at which point the bus turned left into a fallow field. Contractors had laid a temporary load-bearing surface across the grass, a bit like a mountain bike course for buses, and we teetered oh-so slowly to the drop-off point on the far side. A fairly swift transfer, all told, but no expense wasted on the bit at the end.
Getting in: And did the buses drop us off by the entrance? Of course not. They had to terminate early so drivers could escape up a single-track lane, leaving us an undulating 500m walk to the field of play. Weren't the volunteers posted along the way friendly, forever wishing us a good day on the way in (and a smiley thankyou on the way out). A big thumbs up to the Salvation Army, on whose land the mountain biking is taking place, and who'd positioned a brass band in a tent to entertain passing spectators. It's little quirks like this that'll make London's Olympics special, as opposed (say) to the flawless perfection of Beijing. Eventually we reached the security checkpoint, where I was expecting a mini Spanish Inquisition. Not so. I'd deliberately brought a bag, within which I'd deliberately brought a packed lunch and a bottle of water, to test out the list of restricted items we'd been sent in advance. But nobody even summoned me over to take a look inside, let alone rummage in every concealed pocket. I could have been carrying kitchen knives, fireworks and a vuvuzela for all anybody cared, whereas in fact I was importing nothing worse than two pork pies and some sandwiches. Staff simply wrapped a cheap green security bracelet around my arm and sent me inside smiling. I'm sure 2012 friskdowns will be rather more severe but, for any potential troublemaker, this was a walk in the park.
Food: Bet you're expecting this pre-Olympic event would be serviced by McDonalds, the official junkfood of the 2012 Games. Not so. The organisers had hired catering trucks of the kind you'd find at a fair or festival, nothing branded, mostly British. Out by Deane's Drop a Hog Roast trailer serving sustainable Norfolk pork. Down in the hollow one Fish and Chips, one Tapas. And up top a baguette production line in a truck and a coffee dispensary. Most of the day this worked fine, sufficient to service those who'd not brought any sustenance with them. But at lunchtime, between the women's and men's races, the food supply chain quickly congealed. Most of the spectators were up on the hill, where the only edible option was French sticks, and the girls behind the counter couldn't cope. They doled out meaty bread so slowly that one queue barely shuffled forward at all, while the other would have been longer if only it hadn't extended into the portaloos. The poor lad in front of me waited stoically for 40 minutes just to buy a £1.90 bottle of water, then rushed off to drink it before the first race started. Lesson learned: it's all very well providing alternative food choices at an outdoor event, but if that choice is five minutes walk down a sweaty hill, spectators simply aren't going to go there. If nothing else, a few mobile trolleys selling bottled drinks to the masses would have been a life saver.
Reasons why it was great, number 1: the course
Reasons why it was great, number 3: getting close to the action
Reasons why it was great, number 5: expert riders
