London Marathon - Blogabond

Oh my gosh. I have never, ever, EVER seen so many people in one place at one time, who are SO dang healthy! It was scary, it was overwhelming, and it was well too much… it was…the London marathon. This is a huge marathon that goes for 26 miles all around London and the record is done in just over 2 and a bit hours by some incredibly healthy freak. I on the other hand would NEVER willing participate in this sporting event, purely on the grounds of there being WAY to many people for my liking, but if I HAD to, and may I repeat HAD to, then I’d do it in one of two ways.. I’d either dress up and WALK it like some of the participants do (we saw a large bobble head jester jiggle past) or I would stammer in, in last place like the old fella below did. As I said earlier, the record time is just over two hours and it starts at about 9am-ish, so some people are done by about 11am-ish. Chris and I had spent ALLLLLL day out and about the streets of London, and we saw this sweet old man staggering down the road at around 7pm and he still had a little bit of a ways to go. We cheered him on nice and loudly but I don’t think he heard us, he was either in his zone and purely concentrating on that bloody finish line, or had forgotten his hearing aide. He had a nice support group of 3 ambulances and 1 police car following him though so if he was to keel over and give up (as I would have done 1 mile into it) he was in good hands and would have secured a lift home.. or the hospital. We actually had no intention of checking out the marathon today, we thought that 500,000 people in one spot at one time was perhaps just a little too crazy and too much for us. We’d actually arranged to have a yum cha lunch with Bron and 2 of her mates at Leicester Square. It was a yummy meal, tasty and good, we had a relaxing chat and a few laughs before deciding to move on to a park and sit in the sunshine as London was experiencing a rare spout of great warm sunshine weather. We made tracks for St James Park thinking that the marathon was well and truly over by now and we’d have missed it, but that’s when we ran (no pun intended and no, not literally) into the biggest crowd ever. After negotiating our way through the crowds, battling our way to the park and sitting in the sun (shade for me) for some time and hearing crazy stories of how some guy snapped his foot off in a hang gliding accident (true story apparently)

Some of the runners and spectators of the london marathon

Chris and the gang

Chris and I bid the group farewell and head towards South Bank to check out what was happening there, and my word there was a bit going on! We saw buskers of all shapes, sizes and abilities. Our favourite was Darth Vader who was busking to raise money to provide for his family, Luke and Layer.

Chris meeting Darth, who was actually quite pleasent!

We then head into a movie museum, which to be honest, was a bit of a rip off but it was a time filler for us. We had high hopes for this museum when we stepped in, but were sadly disappointed. We were told that the props etc were all original, but I’m 100% sure that we could find all the ‘special’ props they had on eBay for a bargain. Oh well, it was still an experience.

Giving Hans the kiss of life.

We then made our way slowly towards the city, walking across a closed off Westminster Bridge in the middle of the road, allowing us to take some lovely snaps of the houses of parliament and Big Ben (these are my fave outlooks and attractions of London to be honest) That’s when we saw the old codger running in last, bless his smelly, stinky cotton socks.

Good ol' Big Ben.

The last runner in the London Marathon. Bless his sweaty, smelly, cotton socks!

We continued on our way through St James Park where we saw a ‘squirrel whisperer’ I’m not kidding, there was a man standing in the park who was waving his arm up and down and squirrels were running to him, when they were at his feet he’d feed them a crumb. So of course Chris thought he’d give it a crack. Admittedly I asked him to so that I could get an up close photo of one, I thought it’d be handy to use as my FB profile you see… So anyhow, Chris began waving his arm up and down (abit like ringing an imaginary bell) and soon enough Squirrels began to flock, Chris stopped before they got too close saying it was too cruel to ‘lead them on’ with no food. We were standing under a lovely big old tree, all the squirrels had deserted us when they realized we were squirrel whispering imposters, but then I heard this little scratching at the tree, looked up and then gave a little scream, there was a big fat squirrel sitting just above Chris’ head posed as if to jump. But it didn’t jump; Chris did thanks to my surprising yell that in turn scared him. As Chris clutched his heart, I turned red and the observers around us chuckled the squirrel picked up scent of a real whisper and took off to get the nights feed.

Grey squirrel, abit like rats here in the UK

We slowly made our way back to the backpackers where I asked at the counter if there was a chance of me buying a towel which they advertised ‘for sale’ I was told “we don’t have any towels, but I can give you a sheet?” By now I was over it and tired, I accepted the sheet as a make shift towel, figuring that it was at least free, stumbled into the shower before collapsing into bed.

written by

Chris and Emily on April 26, 2009 from London, United Kingdom

from the travel blog: Europe 2009

Send a Compliment

Beware of those squirrels - they have rabies don't they? Or is that just in the USA? Either way, I know I would have been a gonner if that was me - they would have sensed that I was an imposter squirrel whisperer and then worked out I am the 'human that must be attacked by all creatures' and then they would have charged - glad you guys survived it all okay!

written by Ashe Mundy-Castle on May 12, 2009

comment on this...