Today the Olympic Torch came to my home town of Dunstable, for some reason it was scheduled for 7:30am — but it was well worth getting up for.
The first thing that came into sight were the Police motorbikes, to be fair all of the officers from Bedfordshire police looked genuinely happy and seemed helpful, even high-fiving people as they drove past and holding peoples babies for photos. After the bikes was an Olympics car and bus. The bus held about 10 back-up golden torches and some of the relay runners who were going to be running the torch later in the day.
Before you see the actual torch there is a precession of several vans from each of the relay sponsors – Coca Cola, Samsung and Lloyds TSB. To be honest it sort of annoys me that nothing can be pure nowadays and without an “official drink sponsor”, “official banking partner” etc., but I understand why it has to happen — these games aren’t cheap and to be honest neither is something as “simple” as a torch relay.
You can see a lot of effort went into planning the whole thing, getting a big enough police presence and making sure everyone had fun, safely.
After all that we finally got our first glimpse of the torch itself with a runner who we were told was called Sarah.
Once the woman had gone past us my Dad and I ran through an area known as the Quadrant to get to the other main road in the town, just in time to see the torch handed over from Sarah to a man who was disabled from the neck down — it was quite an inspirational moment.
And here is a video of the Torch being ran by the man
A thoroughly enjoyable day for all! I look forward to seeing the torch again soon as I was recently informed that thanks to my Olympics games maker interview I have been given a ticket to the rehearsal of the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, which will be absolutely fascinating! I can’t wait!
Danny
