{"id":1006,"date":"2012-09-18T18:00:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T17:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2025-11-23T06:30:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:30:22","slug":"england-the-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2012\/09\/18\/england-the-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"A Summary So Far Of England & The GB Olympics 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

After criticism of the lack of news from some folk out there, I have been persuaded to get blogging again. This page will be a summary of what has happened over the last\u00a0eight weeks, since we got back from France.\u00a0 There is drama, excitement, generous friends, weight gain and late nights.\u00a0 Eileen has had her brakes checked, after a little red light was coming on; thankfully she has been given the all clear to continue on her travels with us. So, grab a cup of tea, find a comfy chair, \u2018cos this is a big one; one blog for\u00a0eight weeks which would have been about\u00a0forty blogs in France!<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t believe where the last\u00a0two months have gone.\u00a0 Our lives have been absolutely crazy and I am only just starting to feel a bit more relaxed. Since we got back from France, life has been ridiculous and included some fun, some tears and plenty of frustration. I thought, assumed, whatever, that\u00a0because we owned\u00a0a campervan home we would be using it in the UK too….. wrong! \u00a0We\u2019ve been living in and out of other people\u2019s homes, B & B\u2019s and house-sitting, I had no idea where anything was. We were spread between Andy & Carole\u2019s house, Neil & Deb\u2019s house, Andy\u2019s car, the campervan and where ever else\u00a0we happened to be each night. I\u2019m feeling a bit more centred now because we\u2019re all packed up with almost everything back inside Eileen.<\/p>\n

Our first full day back in England was spent in Lynda & Mark\u2019s garden in East Grinstead, not relaxing in the sunshine, but stripping everything out of Eileen and building a huge pile of \u201cstuff\u201d, so that we could valet our little home on the inside and the outside.\u00a0 We were quite stunned at how much we had with us and it was a relief getting everything back in place and knowing that we now had a cleaner home than when we went away.<\/p>\n

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Everything out of Eileen……<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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After a couple of nights with Lynda & Mark, we moved to Caroline & Steve in Horsham, where we indulged in some retail therapy and I managed to buy a new pair of sandals to replace the shabby, worn out ones that\u00a0had been\u00a0ceremoniously dumped in a rubbish bin in Calais.\u00a0 On the Friday evening, Lynda & Mark came over and we all ate fish & chips, while watching the amazing opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics.\u00a0 It\u00a0turned into\u00a0a rather late night, but we managed to get up early on Saturday and Caroline drove the four of us, plus an enormous picnic, over to a village below Box Hill.\u00a0 We walked straight up the very steep path to the village hall at Box Hill and spread ourselves out beside the road. By the time the first cyclists came through in the men\u2019s road race, the area was packed with happy people waving flags and cheering every time the cyclists, the officials and the police motor bikes came past. The cheers grew even louder when the police took to waving back to the crowds.\u00a0 There were no vuvuzelas, thank goodness, but there was one chap with a large and rather noisy cowbell; perhaps he was supporting the Swiss\u2026…? \u00a0It was great fun and we were there for hours as the race does\u00a0nine loops of the Box Hill area before returning up to London.\u00a0 I took advantage of a concrete grit box for a brilliant view of the cyclists each time they wheeled past. I may have been wearing the Union Jack sarong as a scarf, but I was loudly cheering the Aussie cyclists, as well as the Aussie support vehicle, which had a kangaroo on the roof.<\/p>\n

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Olympic Men’s road racing at Box Hill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Our next stop was a night at my brother, Neil\u2019s in Dunstable and then we took Eileen to Hertford and parked her up for five weeks outside Chris\u2019s warehouse.\u00a0 I, for one, felt quite emotional leaving her there and also found it very hard trying to work out what we needed to take down to Andy & Carole\u2019s house, I had got so used to having everything travelling with us.\u00a0 On the last day of July, we caught the train down to London to continue our Olympic experience.\u00a0 We dropped our bags at Fred\u00a0and Christine\u2019s apartment in Westminster and then walked around to Horseguards Parade to watch the beach volleyball at 2.30pm. We saw two men\u2019s matches, followed by two women\u2019s matches, unfortunately both GB and Australia lost their matches, but we still enjoyed the wonderful atmosphere and the fun of being there.<\/p>\n

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The Olympic beach volleyball<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The Dutch take it seriously and certainly stand out!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Nelson in a jaunty new hat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We stayed at Fred & Christine\u2019s for three nights as we also had tickets to see the women\u2019s handball on the Friday afternoon out at the Olympic Park.\u00a0Handball is such a fast game and probably the most exciting of all the events that we went to see.\u00a0 We arrived early and spent hours wandering around the enormous Olympic site and not<\/span> queuing for a souvenir, or for a burger at the world\u2019s largest McDonalds.<\/p>\n

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The view from our seat of the handball<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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By our ninth day in England, we had already slept on two sofa beds and three beds; I was missing Eileen\u2026…<\/p>\n

We went to see \u2018Warhorse\u2019 at the New London Theatre, which was really good; definitely worth seeing. The following week, we went back to Fred & Christine’s for another\u00a0three days and watched part of the men\u2019s triathlon cycling past Buckingham Palace six times and also spent another day at the Olympic Stadium watching athletics. We took Fred & Christine to see \u2018Yes Prime Minister\u2019 at the Trafalgar Studios Theatre on Whitehall, which was wonderfully funny and very topical.<\/p>\n

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Men’s triathlon at Buckingham Palace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Entering the Olympic Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Inside the Olympic stadium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Men’s decathlon polevault<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The mini minis that return the discus and javelins; loved them….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Olympic flame<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Royal Barge at the Olympic Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Forget Wally, where’s Rodney & Laura……..?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The following week, we had yet another day in London with Andy & Carole, after the Olympics had finished. We watched Tower Bridge (with the Olympic rings on it) being raised, then caught the Docklands railway out to the Excel Arena for a mooch around. We \u2018flew\u2019 (boarding passes required) the Emirates Gondola over the River Thames to Greenwich which was amazing; you get big views of parts of London that you never usually see and can see how much the Thames snakes around in big bends towards the centre of London and also way down the river past the Thames Barrier.<\/p>\n

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Tower Bridge with Olympic rings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We then had lunch in the O2 (North Greenwich Arena) and wandered around there for a while before catching a boat back up the Thames to Westminster. Unfortunately, the one we were on didn\u2019t go as far as Westminster, it turned around at Charing Cross and started heading back towards Greenwich!!!\u00a0 The first stop we could get off at, was back at the Tate Modern, so from there we walked over the Millennium Bridge, around St Pauls Cathedral and then hopped on a bus up to Trafalgar Square. So in the one day, we covered the full set –\u00a0trains and boats and planes and buses and shanks’ pony too.<\/p>\n

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The Emirates gondola<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The old Royal Naval College at Greenwich from the Thames<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The four of us shared a couple of Ploughman\u2019s in a pub on Whitehall (how British!) and then walked up to the Haymarket to see \u2018Spamalot\u2019, which was hilarious. We finally caught the tube and train back to Hertford exhausted and with me (badly) singing \u201cAlways Look On The Bright Side Of Life\u201d.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had some very long and very full days, on foot and also riding Boris\u2019 bikes, discovering places we\u2019ve never seen before and revisiting the old favourites, but London is just so busy and alive, with so much going on this summer, that we really have enjoyed ourselves up there; if Sydney was anything like this during the Olympics then we really did miss a good time there, for sure.\u00a0 Rodney has revelled in having so much sport to watch and at times it has been hard to drag him away from televisions. He is now recovering from the \u201cgreatest summer of sport” which seems to have ended with Andy Murray winning the US Open. Quite amazing, I didn\u2019t think he quite had it in him. The Paralympics have been amazingly well received here and the coverage was brilliant. After the massively popular Olympics, the huge popularity of the Paralympics really has taken everybody by surprise. Rodney wishes we had bought some tickets, but we had originally planned not to be around. So he\u2019s glad we were able to see so much on the telly, it was just as good as watching the Olympics. The support for the athletes was tremendous and the noise generated by the spectators has never been experienced at such levels at any Olympics, or Paralympics, before, except of course for the blind soccer where the spectators cannot make a sound\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

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A gold letterbox in Westminster<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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After catching up with everyone in and around the Hertford area, we headed north west to visit cousins Philip & Val, in Happisburgh, Norfolk for a couple of days.\u00a0 We stayed in a gorgeous, very new, B & B, with the best breakfast in the country, but we had the smallest room in the place and the bed was at chest height for me, which involved getting Rodney to haul me up on to it!\u00a0 We then moved down to more cousins, Sheila & Jack, in Suffolk, followed by friends Kay & Al near Stowmarket and then\u00a0two nights in a B & B in Wivenhoe, Essex catching up with Kiwi friends, Heather & Roger. My birthday was comically spent in Essex….at 56 I am an Essex girl!!!! \u00a0\u00a0I wished we had taken Eileen on that trip, but we did have a brilliant time with way too much food and drink.<\/p>\n

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Our B&B in Wivenhoe with Andy’s car parked\u00a0just above the tide line<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Laura Heather & Roger at Wivenhoe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After Essex, we headed back to Hertford for a surprise, belated birthday, pub gathering, which was lovely and then we packed everything back in to Eileen, left Hertford and headed to Horsham to stay at Caroline & Steve\u2019s for a session of house-sitting, while they went away for\u00a0five days. We were left in charge of a rather noisy chatty parakeet called Ed, some non-laying chickens, and a couple of fish. We enjoyed having the time to get loads of banking, paperwork, shopping, mending, fixing, washing, etc., etc., etc. done. We also managed a lovely afternoon bicycle ride that took us along some bridle paths, through various villages and gave me the chance to pick and eat lots of blackberries along the way. We enjoyed Horsham, it is bigger than we expected and I really enjoyed chatting away to Ed, he reminds me a little bit of the lorikeets in our garden at home. Plus I loved having the campervan parked right outside the front door and being able to grab things as I needed them, and not be constantly packing and unpacking suitcases. On the Saturday, when Caroline & Steve returned, the girls went shopping and the boys took to their bicycles and headed down the South Down trail, a converted disused railway line between Guildford and the South Coast. They managed, of course, to squeeze in a couple of stops for pub refreshment on their\u00a0four hour outing…..<\/p>\n

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Rodney on the suspension bridge over the River Wye<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From Horsham we moved west and camped under a huge oak tree in the Forest of Dean for two nights and did a really long walk to Symonds Yat and along the Wye Valley. The first hour was spent walking in a full circle back to the campsite, oops, can\u2019t believe we got so lost!!! \u00a0Fortunately, it was a lovely walk and we managed to squeeze in a cream tea on route and there was an ice cream shop on the way back and after that we really did need the exercise!<\/p>\n

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The lovely Wye Valley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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After a stopover with Jean, my lovely ex mother in law, near Tewkesbury, we drove down to the Cotswolds to my sister Candice for a couple of nights. We then went back to Hertford for a night, intending to meet friends in London for the evening, but one of them had suffered a bereavement, so the whole evening was cancelled, plus neither of us felt too brilliant, so we were a little bit relieved that we could crash and have an early night instead. On Saturday we drove over to brother Neil\u00a0 in Dunstable and then on Sunday we had the big Blake family gathering in Leighton Buzzard, which we had been planning everything around. It was great fun mingling with lots of Blakes, one of whom Rodney hadn\u2019t seen for 31 years and who I had never met before. It was a lovely afternoon and it was so good to catch up with everyone. Thank you very much Sylvia and Taffy for organising the great event.<\/p>\n

We were going to head North after that, but decided to head more east, via Norfolk, to hear some news from Sydney with Vanea, who is over here for a month. We ended up spending two nights on her Dad\u2019s driveway in Aylsham. Unfortunately their shower was broken, so we had to use the campervan shower and it did seem very strange being naked on someone\u2019s driveway within earshot of the smokers outside the British Legion Club just on the other side of the road….!\u00a0 I made sure both the blind and the curtains were closed….! Robert & Jackie, more of Rodney\u2019s cousins were holidaying in the same town, literally just around the corner and so we popped round there for lunch in their holiday cottage. I love coincidences like this; we\u2019ve never been to Aylsham before and suddenly we had two sets of people to see on the same day in the same place!!!!<\/p>\n

We are enjoying all the selection of food back in England, we felt that France was rather narrow on choice and a little bland sometimes. Trouble is, we\u2019ve both put on a bit of weight again, then again that\u2019s probably all the beer for Rodney and for both of us there’s the roasts, oh and all the chips with everything here, even the lasagne! Now we\u2019re back on the road, I think we\u2019ll start trying to eat a few more salads (without chips) and there\u2019ll definitely be less alcohol drinking without friends to encourage us….. We\u2019re aiming to spend most of our time in the Lake District and Scotland for the rest of September and October. The weather still looks atrocious up there, but we think we might as well go there now and then concentrate on all the other bits of Europe next year. Happily it is very cosy inside Eileen, when it\u2019s not too nice outside and we\u2019re all set up with a DAB radio, an iPod full of music, a cupboard full of books that we want to read and lots of DVDs to watch on the laptop.<\/p>\n

Our flights are booked out of Heathrow to Singapore on November 12th, but before that we still have to get down to Polegate in Sussex to see Rodney\u2019s brother Rupert and to pop in on my Aunt & Uncle in Seaforth, not too far from Rupert. After a couple of nights in Singapore, we\u2019re going to spend a week in Brunei with Ian, a friend who teaches up there and also visit Rick and Lam in Ho Chi Minh City before spending a few weeks travelling the length of Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi. We\u2019re booked to house-sit at Kenn & Pla\u2019s beachside apartment for a few weeks in Singapore from around December 12th while they are in Switzerland and then we\u2019re flying back to Sydney on New Year’s Eve, arriving on New Year’s Day. We\u2019ve been offered a house-sit at Mark & Fiona\u2019s, lovely Harbour view apartment at Pyrmont in Sydney for a couple of weeks and then we\u2019ll probably stay at Vanea and Peter\u2019s for a couple of weeks while we sort out tax, car, superannuation, dentist, etc., etc. And, if we can get everything sorted out quickly, we may try and do a trip up the coast.<\/p>\n

So, as you can see, the next\u00a0four months look like being just as hectic and crazy, not sure I\u2019ll survive, but the current plan is to come back here again next year and see more of Europe in Eileen, without the added pressure of the Olympics in the middle. Unfortunately, we\u2019ve just heard that\u00a0our tenants have got behind with the rent again and have now been told they will be taken to court to pay up, or move out. We\u2019re really peeved about it and have been trying to think through all the options of re-renting for\u00a0twelve months; if the agent can find another tenant. The trouble is, our sofa is in there and any new tenant might not want it…. Oh it\u2019s all a bit tricky, but there\u2019s nothing we can do until we find out what is happening with the current tenant. We had hoped they would stay on in Naremburn until November next year, but I don\u2019t think we will give them the option to stay on after Feb 1st, even if they do get up to date with the rent….. Ah well, we\u2019ll just have to wait and see.<\/p>\n

Right, I better finish off here; at least you now have an idea of where we\u2019ve been and where we will be, over the coming months. And\u00a0now we are definitely going to head north, mainly\u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n

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National flags above us in the Olympic stadium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After criticism of the lack of news from some folk out there, I have been persuaded to get blogging again. This page will be a summary of what has happened over the last\u00a0eight weeks, since we got back from France.\u00a0 There is drama, excitement, generous friends, weight gain and late nights.\u00a0 Eileen has had her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-olympics","category-on-the-road-in-great-britain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8186,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/8186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}