Driver 308’s Commonwealth Games Adventure-Day 5

Day 5 July 8^th  2022

This was Alison’s R&R day so I was working with Sarah again. Sarah had recently left  West Midlands after being a police officer for 19 years. She had two grown up sons and a teenage daughter. We got on very well and made a good team. The first location we had to be at today was the Lee Valley Aquatic centre which is a man made white water rafting and canoeing facility at Waltham Cross in Essex. One of our BBs was Olympic Canoeist Mallory Franklin.

Here is Sarah briefing Mallory on the left and Lyn who was to carry the baton in a raft, Lyn is wearing a life jacket under her baton bearer shirt. Lyn, who had swam the English channel many times had to change into a wet suit and take a water survival test when she arrived at Lee Valley. She had no idea that she would have to hold the Baton while riding the white water in a raft! She hadn’t even got a swim suit to wear!

Here is Lyn ready for the raft going down the white water run, she is wearing a yellow helmet.

At Lee Valley they had a very cool thing for getting canoes up to the top of the white water run, a sort of conveyor belt.

When we left Lee Valley to travel to  Wardown Park, Luton we had a police motor cycle escort. The short video shows some of the many highlights of this 45 minute journey out of Waltham Abbey, along the A10, M25 and M1. Much of the journey on the M1 was on the hard shoulder as the motorway was almost at a standstill due to sheer volume of traffic. Mid afternoon on a Friday is never good time to be travelling north on the M1 towards Luton.

The video of  full 50 minute journey is also available but at over 2gb is too large to be embedded in a blog.

As we had no BBs requiring a ride back to their collection point, which was exactly where we were at the big celebration in Wardown Park we were free to make our way to tonights hotel, Dunston Hall near Norwich. This was quite a journey and we had to refuel at Barton Mills. This did not go quite to plan as there was a problem with the fuel card. It was eventually sorted out with a 30 minute phone call and the use of a manual auth, paper voucher and Zip-Zap machine.

Dunstan Hall when we arrived looked stunning.