The Olympics

Right, so first of all, I took something like 600 photos at the badminton... if I ever do something like this again I need to invest in a larger memory card!

I was very lucky during the Olympic applications to get 8 tickets - 4 for the opening session of Badminton (nearly the first event of the games!) and 4 for one of the men's football quarter finals - both in the Wembley Park area, at the arena and stadium respectively. I'll not actually be going to the football now as I'm going to my cousin's wedding (the tickets are taken though, so it's not a waste) so today was my taste of the Olympics - and it was brilliant!

The start wasn't, it was another 4:15am wake-up to assemble with Stef, Stu and Mark - leaving Cambridge at 5:00am in the end to catch an early train in from the outskirts of London. Because we did actually plan ahead we found the ideal station for that - Chalfont & Latimer - about an hour and a half's drive and featuring a car park that will take nearly 500 cars and only costs £1 on Saturday's - combined with free travelcards from the Olympics it was a much better way to get into London!

We got to Wembley Arena about an hour and a half before the session but the doors were open, so a quick trip through security later we were inside - more queueing followed, not to get to the seats, but for the toilets, a cuppa and (in Mark's case) shopping for souvenirs! Some players were already out warming up at this point, but when we sat down it was just in time for the start of the session.

Altogether there were nine games, three on each of the courts (at the same time, which was a bit confusing if you were watching one and another judge read out a completely different score!) and they were all great fun to watch. Highlights were the women's doubles match between Denmark and Japan (well worth a watch on iPlayer if you can) and, of course, getting to watch Team GB in action against Russia for the mixed doubles!

Chris Adcock and Imogen Bankier were playing for GB, Alexandr Nikolaenko and Valeria Sorokina for Russia - it was an epic match (they played all three games) and despite a dominant start and taking the first game 21-14, the GB pair were then hammered a bit in game two losing 9-21 and then just missed out in the final with a score of 18-21. Happily they've still two more matches to come as this is an event with group stages, so we'll see how far they can go.

The rest of the day was spent at the BT Live London venue in Hyde Park where they've got the big screens up for watching - we saw the Murrays in the mens doubles, the men's cycling road race, more badminton, Brazil vs Croatia in handball (no, I don't know what they're doing either) and then it rounded off with Newton Faulkner onstage, a nice chilled end to the day. One tube and an overcrowded (thanks East Coast Railways, you wallys) train home it was time to crawl into bed and fall asleep - a fine start to the Olympics!

To finish, here's some back-Blips:
Summer's Idyll
Ceremony

And I promise to catch up with everyone's Blips from the last few days soon :-)