After thirty years...we nearly end up right up the creek...

A couple of travel blogs - both venues come highly recommended.

Firstly thirty years on...

and then up the creek.

Two weeks on

Olympic stadium - Lego-style

I'm sure that two weeks ago I wasn't that bothered about sport...

Sports watching has always been something I could take or leave - certainly not something to organise my life around. However, last week I found myself watching rowing, basketball, handball, volleyball, horse-riding, swimming, canoeing, clay-pigeon shooting, indoor-cycling - probably missed something there! In fact the only thing that wasn't especially new was road cycling.

Slightly more self control this past week! What a fortnight...

Can you believe it?

A warm welcome home to Suntanned Daffy Duck. Daffy is one of our geocaching travel bugs - a little toy with an ID tag and a mission that is entirely dependant on the goodwill of fellow geocachers to achieve the mission. Daffy's mission was to travel the world and cover more miles than his fellow travel bug Suntanned Spider Man. Spider Man covered 28,209 miles - how many miles did Daffy Duck cover?

Spider Man was despatched in February 2005, returning home October 2006. His mission was to travel the world, visit New York and climb the Empire State Building. In those twenty months he achieved his main goal up the Empire State on a very misty day, (see right) courtesy of a fellow US-based cacher, and visited four countries South Africa, USA (eight states), Norway and Sweden.

Bear in mind that we had no control over Daffy Duck. He was placed in a "cache" (a lunch box hidden in the UK countryside), retrieved by a random cacher, moved to another cache, retrieved by another cacher - and so the chain went on. Daffy took a little longer - one month short of five years - and visited three countries Australia, Canada (six states), and Germany. At no time were we able to control his journey. So, the big question, did he beat Spider Man's journey and, if so, by how much? Yes he did - by one mile! 28,210 miles.

So here they are safely home.

A timely footnote. Sadly, not all travel bugs make it. On Saturday 9 July 2005, we despatched a travel bug to celebrate London being awarded the Olympics and to remember those affected by the 7/7 London bombs the day after London was awarded the Games. The mission was to visit each of the 2012 Olympics candidate cities - Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris (in any order) and return to London. Unfortunately this bug made it to America and was in Pennsylvania en route to New York when it vanished without trace.

Inspiring a generation...

Yep, we're inspired.

If Helen Glover can watch the 2008 Olympics, take up rowing and then win gold four years later, what's to stop us?  The last time Mr & Mrs W were out rowing was six years ago (probably to the week) on the Royal Military Canal in Hythe - that time we spent quite a bit of time going around in circles.

Just need to check whether there'll be a mixed doubles race, book our flights and then we'll be Flying Down to Rio. Keep an eye out for us...

What a way to start...

Follow that... Following Beijing was always going to be a challenge but Danny Boyle, his creative team, and the cast of volunteers rose to the challenge and exceeded it.

Even many of the Olympic cynics seem to have enthusiastically embraced the ceremony. Quirky and eccentric in places, the global media's reviews of the opening ceremony were equally supportive. Well done everyone.