Back to Blighty - Finally the end

So, just one more post to bring this fortnight of Paralympic fun to an end, as the journey home threw up a challenge or two, well what else.

A late check out time from the hotel, meant I had plenty of time to get my case sorted and finish off my "long day" 2 part blogs. 

Whendie had to wait for her landlady to meet up with her before she then grabbed a taxi over to my hotel.

We took the short walk over the road into the station and headed for the RER, the same journey I've been doing most days, as the airport is one stop past the venue where the sitting volleyball took place.

A final cheese and ham baguette and hot chocolate from the platform shop and a pastry for Whendie before we boarded the train.

We arrived at the airport and had a 5 minute walk to terminal 3 and found the check in desk. Whendie's case was .6 kg over her 15kg limit. Not bad.

Mine, however, had gone from 17.6kg on the way out, to 23.6kg heading back. Ooops uniform and souvenirs I think. Of course my ticket, as I'd found out before I went out, didn't include any luggage, but the helpful lady at the airlines had upgraded me to a 30kg allowance, so it was a tense few minutes as the lady at the check in desk had several discussions with her managers.  

Thankfully I'd printed the email from the airline confirming it all, so finally we were checked in and waiting to fly.  The chilled vibes still keeping me calm.

Heading through to departures we stopped in the duty free shop to buy a few edible goodies to bring home.

The flight was more or less on time leaving and thankfully no more incidents to contend with.

An hour and 10 minutes later we landed at Southampton and headed through to collect luggage. Needing to cross the railway to get to the taxi rank it seemed the lift was out of order. So was pleased when a nice man offered to help carry it down the stairs for me. And no he didn't run off with it.

A very short wait at the taxi rank and I was whizzing home. 

After the last couple of long days, I think unpacking in the morning and an early night. 

And so another adventure comes to a close. 

The next one is already in the planning, I'm just waiting to hear if it'll work out. But trust me, there'll be a blog for it if it happens.

But for now... au revoir, à bientôt.

The Long Final Day - Part 2 - Closing the Games

Tried hard not to fall asleep after the morning's marathon stint, but maybe I should have as there was still a lot of day left to be awake for.

Earlier in the week we had received an email asking if we wanted to be in the ballot for a place at the closing ceremony, the main requirement was to have done at least 1 road shift. 

Technically at that point I hadn't as the Para-tri had been moved to a day I wasn't on shift, so the marathon was to be my only road shift. The ballot gave me a place.

We had to be at the Stade de France at 6pm, gathering at the Aquatic centre, where we were tagged and grouped and given, what I'd say, was probably the best lunch pack I've had since being here.

We were there a while before we got briefed as to what we were doing. All in French so I got the gist, but when I asked someone what we were doing they were unsure. Seems I had understood the French after all.

We had all been divided into 3 teams, Blue, Yellow and White. No idea what the other 2 groups would be doing, but the Blue team were destined for the arena floor with the athletes.

Turns out we were to enter as a group, during the final speeches.

And yes it decided it was going to rain hard for most of the evening.

We had to pair up to walk in, and I found an American lady, Melissa, who ended up being my walk in buddy, and who I enjoyed most of the evening with. She had been exclusively on Road events, cycling, para-tri and marathon. 

We were held for a long time before we entered so all the athletes were already seated and then speeches began and we were ready to go.

But, wow, what an experience, with all the audience and their light bracelets, creating red, white, blue and green around the stadium. 

The noise was incredible as the final hand over to LA 2028 took place and the entertainment began. Loads of different DJs and artists, many I'd not heard of, all kicked off by Jean-Michel Jarre.  (Sadly video too big to add here)

We danced, did the conga and got showered in confetti, while the flame throwers in the stadium warmed us up briefly every time they went off.

Incredible atmosphere there.

It ended at 11pm, but then of course we had to leave along with all the spectators, so it was slow progress to get to the RER station and onto the RER back to Gare du Nord.

Our final evening complete, I head home tomorrow.

What an experience it has been.

Will I apply for LA2028? Hey who knows, but, I'll blog about it if I do 😀 

The Long Final Day - Part 1 - Marathon

Oh my, who ordered a 3.45am alarm call? So tempted to just turn over and sleep, but "duty calls". Not a lot of transport about, so I decided to get a "Bolt" with a lovely guy called Ousmane, who said he had played football for QPR and was hoping to get back to it.

He was born in Paris to parents from Burkina Faso. No idea if all that is correct, but he was very chatty and very pleasant at 4.45am.

The ride was about 15 minutes and he got me to my meeting point for just after 5am. Then we had a lot of waiting around until someone arrived to brief us. So that's half hour extra we could have had at least. 

Eventually we were, well I won't say briefed, but placed along the final sections of the route at crossing points. TBH probably not needed here. Though at 6am it seems to be busy with people coming home from a night out.

But the French is coming in handy as most of the others don't speak much English, though we do have a Japanese guy in the team. He did Tokyo 2020 (2021) and said the atmosphere was very different with no spectators. As he was coming here he was given pins, by the Japanese Olympic Committee to bring with him, and it's a very lovely one too.

This morning was all about the Marathon. Two categories, wheelchair and VI athletes, some running with Guides, which must be really hard over 26 miles. I was allocated a position right at the final turn into the finish at Invalides. But there was a really cold wind, so at least that should keep me awake. 

Spoke too soon, security decided we couldn't be there so were shunted off the course altogether. The crossing point closed until the races had finished.

Kind of defeats the object of having a crossing point if you're not going to let people cross when there's no one around on the course. But I wasn't making the rules here.

The first wheelchair athlete arrived and I went to take a photo but all the security people on the edge of the course blocked the view. Hey ho. I got the 2nd and 3rd, just.

I decided to go for a wander to see if I could get a hot chocolate somewhere. The coffee shop I knew of, was on the other side of the road and security were letting no-one pass. Even with plenty of time to go before any more athletes were due.

Feeling cold I wandered off to find something to help warm me up, and there was a small coffee bar open not too far away, so I had a hot chocolate and wandered back a different way, so that I could join the others on the opposite side of the road (no crossing required). 

We watched all the athletes arrive, heading into the Invalides to the finish. Spectators gradually filled up the stands and the roars the competitors received got louder.

(Photo pre race)

We were the last marshal points on the course, so it was a long time for us to be out there. 

Such a long drawn out morning with, we think, only 52 competitors in total. We were given a lunch bag. a quite nice coolbag to keep, but just a shame the contents weren't great.

Thankfully it didn't rain and the sun did make an appearance to warm us up. But standing for so long my back wasn't happy and I was incredibly grumpy, being tired and irritated by the stupidity of crossing points with no crossing allowed. (The perils of being involved in lots of events I guess)

Eventually, after the races finished, I managed to get away around 12.45 and headed to the megastore to buy a few more bits. Amazingly the total was exactly the amount to use up the Visa Go balance (a card I had euros on that could only be used in France and was needed as Visa was the only card used at the games.)

From there I headed back to the hotel to try and get a little rest before this evenings shenanigans.

What a morning. I think I could happily have stayed in bed and had a lovely relaxing morning, but I guess that's not really why I was here. And because of being part of the roads events team, I had been able to apply to be part of the closing ceremony for this evening.

See Part 2 for more details.

Final Volleyball shift

So Saturday today, I think. 

Women's finals day. 

I was to be there for the Bronze medal match which kicked off at 3pm, with shift starting 11.45am. To be honest we really didn't need to be there that early as the team last night had already set things up ready to go, there really wasn't much to do, but everyone set about doing it anyway.

Our final gift was collected, a nice dry bag with towel, soap and a thank you pin.

More posters needed to be removed from the warm up room walls, but these weren't needed for families. Sadly I was in the canteen at the time, so missed being able to take the one I wanted to keep, but I did manage to get 2. (More things not to go on display I guess)

There really wasn't much to do this afternoon until the match finished by which time the next shift had arrived.

I watched a bit of the game on the TV in the athletes lounge, which eventually Brazil lost to Canada (0-3), so Canada got the Bronze. 

Later found out that the Gold went to USA and the silver to China (3-1)

I also found out that the Chinese teams had little pandas to give out. Darn, missed one of those.

I had a chat, in French (yep I was impressed too) with the companion to the mascot. Quite pleased with myself that I could be understood. a bit more Franglais than French maybe. Sad to go home now I'm getting a bit more confident to speak more.

End of shift arrived and we all piled onto the court for photos, it's been a huge team at this arena that's for sure.

I'm in here somewhere (can you spot me?)

There was a gathering in the volunteer centre at 5pm but there were so many people there we decided just to say our farewells and head off. It was quite sad to be saying goodbye to the friends we've made over the past 2 weeks.

I needed to buy a couple of bits at the shop on site, but as we got there we were told that we had to wait 30 minutes while they had to shut temporarily. So as it was trying hard to rain, I decided to try and get to the megastore tomorrow and hope they had what I needed. 

Liz and I then headed off to the RER to go and have some food at a restaurant near Gare du Nord.

We sat on an outside table, but so many people were smoking around us. It's amazing how many of the French do smoke.

A set meal, we both had pate followed by steak and chips, washed down with a beer.

Hot food with some taste.

We then went our separate ways. I have the marathon volunteer shift in the morning at some unearthly hour and then the evening at the closing ceremony. 

Going to be a long final day.

Medals Galore

Today was men's medal matches day at the seated Volleyball at North Paris Arena.

A later start as there were to be only 2 matches.

I had thought about going out earlier for some breakfast in a cafe, but by the time I'd motivated myself to go, I decided just to take a few photos of the hotel and more of the station, then get another of the cheese and ham "sandwich" and a hot chocolate, on the platform. (My room is the one next to the small red awning over the hotel entrance, with flags outside under the letters EL of the hotel. The metro entrance is to the far left of the picture, just visible, so I've not far to go to get my train in the morning)

There was a young man there trying to persuade the man in front of me to buy him a sandwich, he refused. He approached me and I initially feigned that I didn't understand, but then I thought hey what the heck, so I asked which one he wanted. It wasn't much if someone was genuinely hungry. After I paid, I turned to look for him and saw him sat with someone on the edge of the steps eating. He looked at me and I nodded back to him in return. If genuine I managed to help a little, and if just trying it on, well to be fair, it was less than a fiver.

Got onto the RER B and ended up getting to the stadium early so had time to sit in the volunteer room with the rest of the team. 😀

We found we hadn't been allocated roles for today, so we just all got stuck into doing whatever was needed. 

A delivery of fresh towels arrived, but they'd come by car so weren't taking the dirty ones away. To make room in our storage room, we moved the big full cage of dirty, smelly towels into a different storage area and Liz and I got folding the rest of the dirty towels so they'd take up less room, and when the new towels arrived, we used their plastic bag covers to stack the old towels in, so they too could go to storage.

We started to take some of the posters off the warm up room walls to roll them up, so they're then ready to be given to families and athletes. Many of them had been stuck with such powerful glue squares that we nearly ended up ripping many of them. 

Ines, our team leader, brought in some Slovenia button badges that her team insisted she gave to us all. Nice, as it's not really a work area we've had much contact for pin collecting. 

Our first and only game on our shift today, was the Bronze medal match between Egypt and Germany. Egypt were the team I had the accidental Team Liaison role with at the beginning.  Cheering them on from behind the scenes I was delighted that Egypt won in a very exciting 5 set match, 3 sets to 2.

I went to congratulate them and one of their managers gave me a great big sweaty hug and a kiss on the cheek and said thank you. 😊 I'm sure I helped them, though obviously not enough to get them to the Gold match.

The Iran and Bosnia teams arrived around the same time as the 2nd shift people. So Liz and I headed off to grab a drink and some food. Except they'd run out of chips. Pah!

Bought a few bits at the store on site and I managed to get a sitting volleyball t- shirt. Then I went to check on the results board, and noticed the Bronze results hadn't been put up, so I scuttled back to the athletes lounge and offered to do it. I'll check in the morning to see if the Gold match has been added as we know that Iran beat Bosnia by 3 sets to 1.

We did think about trying to watch the gold medal match but it didn’t feel right to stay on the courtside, nor to be in the athletes lounge, as Egypt athletes were using it before the medal ceremony.

So, we decided that we might as well head back to our respective digs and caught the RER which again was a faster train, getting back to Gare du Nord much quicker.

Once back didn't venture out again. In for the night, though not so early to sleep as a call from Whendie meant we spent ages chatting and catching up.

Last shift at the Volleyball on Saturday. Womens medal matches. At least another later start.

Info everywhere

Today started wet. And then wetter. The rain was not letting up at all.

Thankfully my hotel is about 20 metres from the metro entrance, and there's a cafe next door so I can almost make it there under the awnings that reach out over the pavement.

The RER B was showing delayed, so I decided today I'd have some breakfast. A hot chocolate and a demi-baguette with ham and cheese.

I saw a fellow volunteer, Claire, and we waited together then boarded the train together. It was pretty crowded.

A few stops along the line, we approached a station and the anouncement came that we would not be stopping there, then the next station the same, then we stopped at the next one and the announcement was we would be waiting there. 

Then came a French announcement that the train was going no further so we were advised to switch to another platform for the next train. But that didn't fare much better.

Eventually we limped into the station and passengers were advised that this train was going no further. Now for those who needed to continue on to the airport that would not have been welcome news. We,  however, were fine.

Almost everyone arrived late this morning and I discovered I was to be at the Sport information desk based in the Athlete lounge. Greeting athletes, answering any questions, but most importantly updating the results board at the public entrance.

This I had to do twice, at the end of each of the Men's matches. The responsibility of sticking the right name in the right place was huge. But pretty sure it was correct. (I only checked it several times).

This evening the womens matches were on so I hope that my counterpart for the late shift was equally as accurate.

Tomorrow the Men's Bronze and Gold matches take place and on Saturday it is the turn of the women.

Things are slowly coming towards a close, and I received an email and message today that I've been chosen to be part of the closing ceremony. Well to be present and welcoming I think rather than actually part of it. So get Channel 4 on, on Sunday evening, and see if you can spot me. 😉 

It's going to be a very long day so I hope I can stay awake as I'm at the marathon early that morning.

As the new team had arrived we set off 'home" (how quickly it becomes that eh?). The rain had stopped but the train was still packed.

Arrived back at the hotel before 5pm and set my phone to charge before I decided to head out to the games Megastore and buy a few goodies.

With accreditation in my bag to get a 20% discount (off all shop items except those already reduced items which saved me 18 euros).

I bought a few bits and in spite of getting a prepaid visa specially for it, I used cash as it meant I got through the tills much quicker.

The shop is right on the Champs Elysees, very near to Place de la Concorde. I had a quick look in the Samsung store across the road (waste of time that was) and had a bit of fun in the Alibaba Shop for a couple of pins. Then I decided to wait to see the balloon/flame go up. But this time from the other side. But as it wasn't due to go until after 9pm I had a good 3/4 hour wait.

Not sure it was worth it as my phone's photos aren't that great, but the atmosphere in the Champs Elysees was fab.

The road being closed, there were many wandering along it, but the state of the road makes me wonder why we complain about ours at home. 

(Can just see the flame...)

Then it got dark

Time to head back and sleep. 

Back aches, feet ache, 13700 steps done today and lunch wasn't even worth a mention. I'll be back skinny as a rake (haha 🤣)

Start later for Friday and Saturday as there are only two games so maybe I'll be able to get some cafe breakfast. We shall see eh?

Just Chilling

Another day at the North Paris Arena for the Sitting volleyball and tasks for today were as "Changing Room" monitor. The delights of this particular role are to ensure that before the teams arrive, there are fresh towels in the room, the team signs are on the door and the doors are unlocked when the teams arrive and locked when they go to the court. Then opened again when they return. Once they leave, we remove the used towels and note those used on a chart in the storage room. We then top up and refill for the next teams coming in.

Water and towels are the things we count out and in (if not used) so we can keep track on numbers and make sure we've enough for future matches.

It's all exciting stuff, well not really, but it is essential and it's part of the back stage mechanics that keeps everything ticking over, even if at times it feels a little bit inconsequential.

Today in the Arena we had matches to place 7th and 8th teams, and this afternoon 5th and 6th teams. 

This morning we had both French teams, male and female. Competing against Ukraine and Rwanda respectively, with both French teams losing in 3 sets, though they both played well, and, I managed to see some on the TV in the athletes lounge.

Tomorrow we have the remaining 4 teams playing for the semi finals to determine bronze and gold medal matches which take place on Friday and Saturday. Being on the earlier shift we get to work for the Bronze matches but may possibly be able to stay for the Gold matches. Or find tickets to watch. I've been here since they started it would be a shame not to see them finish.

At the end of shift (crossover point of the 2 shifts) we had some on court, team photos taken. As many as were there working on FoP and Athlete Services, then just each separately. It's a big team keeping it all going.

Too tired to go anywhere else I decided just to head back to my hotel, via a small carrefour local, to get some water, coca-cola and crisps, and at the hotel bought another couple of the beers.

I was in for the night, just chilling and relaxing. Tomorrow maybe I'll head out after shift, but for tonight I'm trying to recoup some energy.

Have a lovely new bag too. 😀

3 more days to go at the Arena and then a final day helping at the marathon. The countdown is on.

For tonight I am just chilling, watching some of the Paralympic sport on the French TV, so bonus of improving my listening and comprehension in French. Every small thing helps 😀