The Sporting Tour of the World - Stage 2

Highs and lows from the 1^st week in UK/ Europe

Highs

· The weather; mid to high 20s every day, no rain to be seen. Who ever said that the weather in England was ever miserable?

· The long hours of daylight, sunset at 10 pm every night? Yes please, where do I sign?

· Stuff to see; walking around London is quite difficult as there are so many landmarks, you never seem to be able to get anywhere quickly as you keep bumping into monuments. For example; walking from Oxford Circus to Lord’s you can pass Madame Tusouds, The Sherlock Holmes Museum, the London Canal network, Regent’s Park and just round the corner from the ground is the Abby Road Recording Studios made famous by The Beatles.

· The Dutch; arriving late on Friday night into Utrecht, the Orange Army was in full celebration mode after their win earlier that night and the party continued the next day at the prologue stage of Le Tour De France.

· The tour itself; the prologue was cool to see all the guys riding off one after the other, with seemingly everyone in The Netherlands out to see them.

· English football fans and media; watching the game a week ago made me understand what it is like to be an English football fan; the media had spent the last 2 days talking the team up, despite the obvious fact they actually were crap. Then they lost, they had a scapegoat in the sideline official who missed the goal. Then they turned on the coach, the selectors, the players, the support staff, the injured players who hung around camp (Davis Beckham & Rio Ferdinand) and the length of the Premier League season. It still hasn’t occurred to the English media that the German side is actually very good.

· The German soccer team; the Socceroos now look pretty good after what the Germans have done to England and Argentina.

· Attending an Australia – England cricket match in England; OK so it was a dead rubber in a series that no one really cared about in the first place. But still, going to the Oval with a full house to see the two teams was still pretty cool, especially when Australia won. By the way I am now absolutely convinced that Steve Smith will be a 10 + year player in all forms of the game for the Aussies.

Lows

· The European train network; it may have been a one-off but getting to my hotel 6 hours late when only supposedly travelling for 4 ½ hours and thus missing two world cup quarter finals did not make me very happy…

· The northern hemisphere, went for a walk my first day in London; ended up taking a 3-hour long-cut because the sun is in the south in the middle of the day not north thus throwing me out completely.

· Missing sporting events; things I didn’t get a chance to watch -

1. Wimbledon finals

2. Any of the world cup quarter finals due to le tour on Saturday and train fiasco on Friday

3. I somehow missed le tour three times on Sunday; went through Rotterdam 1 hour before the start of stage, had lunch & walked through Antwerp but missed le tour passing through by an hour due to rail connections and finally my Eurostar train left Brussels 30 minutes before the riders where expected in for finish of stage.

Things seen so far:

- Greenwich

- Big Ben

- Regent’s Park

- Camden Town

- British Museum

- Westminster Abbey

- Buckingham Palace

- Lord’s Cricket Ground & The Oval Cricket Ground

- Churchill Museum

- Trafalgar Square

Things still to see:

- Tower of London

- Natural History Museum

- Windsor

- Wimbledon

- St Andrews

- Wembley Stadium