BORIS'S BUS SCULPTURE TRAIL...PART II

What do you do with Olympic sites after the Olympics? Turn them into a white elephant a-la Homebush in Sinney? Not here in London, where the lord mayor cleverly designed one of his bus sculpture trails through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park precinct. A couple of salient points:

Wandering through the myriad high rise apartment blocks formerly occupied by competitors is akin to walking through a pristine ghost town. There are hundreds of them and they're all empty. BUT - they all happen to be sold and even more are under construction. Owners cannot occupy the premises for another 12 months and so apart from cleaners - and me - there's nobody there.

There are unusual sculptures in the parks, one made out of disused IKEA plastic bag dispensers!

The Aquatic Centre, Lee Valley Velodrome and main stadium are magnificent. The main stadium is undergoing a facelift (already!) for the 2105 Rugby World Cup and once that is over the stadium will be exclusively handed over to West Ham United for the next 99 years in a deal worth 500 million quid!! Bobby Moore and Alf Garnett would roll in their graves. Jeez, I hope they never get relegated from the Premier League!

Lee Valley Velopark

Copper Box Arena - can't work out how it got its name!

Paralympics Presentation Dais

A big day for Team GB

 

Main stadium

Aquatics Centre

The coffee at the Timber Lodge Cafe was appalling! And this'll tickle you; one of the buses is directly outside the cafe, so I asked the young sales lady which way to go to the next one. Not only did she not know where the next one was, she didn't realise there was one outside her front door!!

Access is superb via the Stratford Underground, Overground and International train stations.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit is amazing. It's the tallest sculpture in the UK, towering over the main stadium and the observation deck provides unparalleled views of the precinct and East London.

But here's the real genius of the whole development - take a bow Frank Lowy! When you exit the station (and there is only one way out!!!) you find yourself smack dab in the middle of Westfield Stratford City! Now that's what I call Australian ingenuity; I wonder how much it cost to organise that!

Anyway, enjoy the buses. My fave is the last one.

 

Ding! Ding! (Crispin Finn)

Moquette (Beth Quinton)

Journey To Anywhere (Oliver Dean)

Time Travel (Sara Adhitya)

English Herbaceous Border (Sarah Jane Richards)

Hold Tight (Jane Headford)

Union Jack (Kristian Movahed)

The Paralympic Bus (Tom Yendell)

Invisible To The Environment (Pawel Srokowski)

Who Dat???

Dazzler (Sophie Green)

CumulonimBUS - geddit!!! (Loz Atkinson