Having had an excellent time at Horseguards for the Beach Volleyball, we went to the furthest venue bar one (not including Football) on Monday morning.
This required 4 adults and 2 kids to be ready to leave at 0615 and somehow they all managed it and we were on the train at 0630. My sister ignored the universal commuter "don't talk to me " rule, and discovered we were standing next to the guy who was responsible for building the Water Polo venue!
We changed at Waterloo to get on an even more packed commuter train to Windsor, where we struck up a conversation with the wife of Wes, a sculler in the USA four (they subsequently lost the repechage). She would only get to see him briefly in what one of the volunteers dubbed "the kiss & cry tent". There was a bit of a queue to get on the shuttle buses, but we were given some vouchers which were later to prove useful.
Once we got to the venue there was an awfully long walk around the racecourse to get to the rowing, and it was a bit of a struggle for my mother, but eventually, and under protest, we persuaded her to have a ride in a wheelchair to get there. She then sat with my brother in the stands, while we set up on a grassy area on the far side of the stands around the 1500m mark.
The races were mainly repechages, but we saw Grainger & Watkins looking very dominant in their heat. They had good & informative commentary over the tannoy, and big screens, but to be honest, compared to Athens wherever saw Pinsent's 4th Gold, it was all a bit meh - maybe because it was just heats...
Afterwards we hung around a bit and watched some of the crews training & warming down, and then it was the long walk back to the buses. This time we got mum a mobility scooter, and once we'd got to the exit, one of the volunteers let B have a go!
The long walk back followed, but we decided to get the boat back to Windsor instead of the bus, to make a bit more of a day of it - but it was another long walk to the jetty! On the train we discovered that the vouchers we had were for a free drink up to the value of £10! So we went off to a corner of Waterloo station and sat on sofas and had cocktails! Good way to end a decent day out!
The pluses:
The volunteers were fantastic, really friendly, helpful & welcoming.
The transport was efficient too, and the games travelcard was great - we had something similar in Athens, where a ticket for an event was good enough.
The negatives:
The prices of the merchandise & food - scandalous but sadly predictable. You could go along on one of the cheaper tickets, which cost less than a t-shirt! It would have been nice to see some tat in pocket money range - the cheapest stuff was still over £6!
However, the ridiculous prices didn't seem to act as any kind of deterrent either, so I suppose that we, the consumer, only have ourselves to blame!
The distances - was it really necessary to use the Windsor racecourse car park - couldn't we have got closer? And the mobility assistance could have been better signposted as well.
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