Excellence

Today we went to the Olympics!

I would probably have never got around to doing anything given my lack of enthusiasm for London, crowds and watching other people do sport, but E applied for a few tickets on our behalf. We got about half of them in the bizarre lottery allocation process. So today E and I, and Margaret and Peter (and maybe piglet stowing away in the rucksack) spent the whole day at the Equestrian Cross-Country at Greenwich Park; and an excellent day it was all round (even with 50,000 spectators).

I have to say I was impressed with the number, competence and genuine friendliness of the many volunteer Game Makers (oh dear, what a name).

The weather was perfect - mostly sunny with with enough cloud and breeze to keep things just nicely warm. We were able to wander around between fences and covered most of the park during the day.

I'm not an equestrian sport follower myself but E knows which leg is which, having ridden for many years. I have a couple of hundred photo's of horses, some spectacular even if I've no idea who they are. It seems appropriate to blip a Team GB rider - this is Kristina Cook having just cleared the woven chessboard and giant pieces.

On the whole it was difficult to photograph the Brits - I have a fair number of joggle-blurred photo's of back of heads and waving arms. I only got this one by crouching under and in front of someone who'd been standing in my way, with iPhone at the ready in the middle of my shot.

This being day 2 of the 3-day event there were no medals today, but Team GB ended the day in silver position.

One problem with the park having the one event only was that when it finished 50,000 people wanted to get on the train all at once. Suspecting this wasn't going to be a 'happy' situation we wandered for a while around a festival that was happening in Greenwich and had a rather tasty crepe and an ice cream before heading home.

An excellent day.