As Sunday was the last day of the Paralympics, my sister and I went up to London to watch the Marathon. It was a very hot day, and we didn't manage to find such a good spot as we had for the Olympics Marathon. For some reason, Canon Street Station wasn't open this time so we couldn't easily get to the nice shady spot we had found last time. We started near St. Paul's, and ended up trying three different spots, one for each time the athletes came past us.
The first time we had a shady spot on the railings, but the road curved the wrong way, so we had no view of the approach; suddenly, the wheelchairs were upon us and were going so fast there was no hope of recognising even the country, let alone the competitor. For the second pass, we moved to a better place, but it was in the full sun, so, though we now had a view of who was coming, we nearly fried.
It was a case of third time lucky; by wandering around a bit, we found a shady spot right on the railings where we had a good view of the approach.
This time, I managed something more than just a photograph of a back wheel. These are the leaders, with David Weir in third place.
They are all travelling so fast, I consider it a miracle I managed to get anybody at all in my picture. You can probably see the wheels are a bit out of focus - these guys really move!
We waited until everybody had been past, and the wonderful BBC Web Site let us know before we left that David Weir had won the Gold Medal.
Before leaving the area, we couldn't resist making a quick visit to the roof of the nearby shopping centre for this wonderful view of the top of St Paul's Cathedral.
It's just a pity there's so much shopping centre roof in the way!
It was well into the afternoon by then, and we set off to find some lunch. This was harder than you might think. We had intended to cross to the South Bank by the Millennium Bridge, but it was closed because there were too many people on it. We walked along the north bank of the Thames, intending to have something to eat at Somerset House, but found that there were so many anti-pedestrian railings we ended up almost at Embankment Station before we could cross the road. By the time we had walked back along to Somerset House, our feet were about to drop off and we were very glad to sit down.
After we had eaten, my sister, who was very hot and tired, wanted to go home to rest so she would have some energy to attend the closing ceremony. I walked (or rather, hobbled) with her to Charing Cross for her train home, then I crawled over the Hungerford Bridge to the South Bank where there was a lot more free entertainment. To my dismay, the crowds were so great that it was almost impossible to get through, let alone see anything. The crowds were even 10 deep round the Morris Dancers!
There was no hope of seeing any of the acrobatic shows outside the National Theatre, I couldn't even get close enought to see over the tops of heads. So I hobbled back to the Tube and made my way back to Victoria Station to catch the train home. Unlike my sister, I had no ticket for the closing ceremony, so watched it from the comfort of my own sofa. I rather enjoyed it, especially the amazing huge machines at the start.
I had agreed to meet my sister again the next day near St Paul's for the Athletes' Parade, and, although the crowds were huge, I did manage to find a place about 3 people back from the railings. It didn't matter that I wasn't that close to the railings, as the athletes were all on open-topped buses, so you could see everybody.
It was all quite exciting. Because it was lunch time, lots of Londoners turned out to see the parade. I was very envious of those in offices which looked directly onto the route - you can see the people at every window. If you look carefully at the picture below, you can see that some people in the building on the right-hand corner of the street opposite have made a streamer of Union flags and hung them out of the window. They are blowing upwards in the wind.
There were some motor cycles first, then a big float and a marching band. Mo Farah was on the first bus.
Jessica Ennis was on the next one
I didn't, in fact, take a picture of every single bus, though I do seem to have an awful lot of photographs of the backs of people's heads, or their raised arms. You can see, in the one below, a woman in front of me is pointing right at Victoria Pendleton.
It was over in under half an hour, and everybody quickly made their way back to work. I went back to Victoria and caught the train home, feeling sadly flat now all the excitement was over.
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