I'd tried to get tickets in every round for the ballot and failed. I wanted to go and see the cross country phase of
the three day eventing at Greenwich, but I guess every other horse
mad girl in the country did as well. Needless to say I was
unsuccessful.
Eventually in the final free-for-all, I
got tickets. To what? Beach Volleyball. Why? Well it came down to a
straight choice between beach volleyball and canoeing, because we had
a limited number of days we could have go. We decided that
it would be more fun to go and see something in the centre of London
than out in the countryside, so we chose beach volleyball (a sport I knew next to nothing about).
We drove to London on Saturday morning,
listening to the cycling road race – poor Mark Cavendish, I was so
hoping he would win. Checking into our hotel, we used the nine zone
travel card which came with the tickets to see a little bit of
London. One of the cultural events was the creation of a scale model
of Stonehenge as a bouncy castle and last weekend it was in a London
park. I went, I saw, I bounced – it was great fun.
We caught the tube back to central
London and walked down the Mall. That was a terrific view – olympic
and union flags lining the Mall down to Buckingham Palace, where the cycling road race had finished just a few hours before.
The beach volleyball stadium was build
in 30 days flat in Horseguards Parade; where they troop the colour.
It seemed to be made entirely out of very thin scaffolding, but had
great views and surprisingly comfortable seats! We and thousands of other people went through the very slick airport type security – bag x rays, metal detectors etc in about 10 minutes and into the holding park.
The atmosphere was fantastic –
everyone else there seemed to know as little about beach volleyball
as we did, but there was a very helpful explanation from a
commentator at the start. We watched four games; two mens and two
ladies , with music booming, a compere geeing the crowd up every so
often and a troupe of dancers coming out in any gaps or dull moments.
By luck, we had a match between
Australia and USA ladies (both medal winning teams in the past), who
were incredibly skilled, with some amazing rallies.
Night fell and you could see the London
Eye over the top of the buildings. It looked fantastic.
There were some empty seats in the olympic officials area, but most of the stadium was packed (except when people were in the queue for the bar or food). Everyone there was having a great time and in the same way as the great six nations games, there were fans of every nationality sitting side by side. It was a fantastic day and a truly memorable experience.
Well done Great Britain. I think we can be really proud.
