Last year I went to the outdoor show at Excel London, I enjoyed it so I thought I would repeat the trip this year. it is quite good value for money, the outdoor show is not that big but the ticket includes entry to the boat show and the bike show.
I purchased my ticket the night before, it’s £2 cheaper and saves queue on the day. I planned to get off early in the morning and have a look around the area with my cameras as the weather was predicted to be frosty and sunny.
I left the house at 0800 and headed round the M25, till the M11 took me into London Docklands and the Excel Exhibition Center. There is a lot of building work going on in that part of London with the Olympics imminent. The final turn of the sat nav was closed and the diversion poor. I ended up doing a circuit then a guess at where to go to reach my destination with instructions!
By the time I was parked up (£15 for 6 hours) it was more or less 1000 so I went straight to the exhibition. The halls were just opening and they played a rousing tune over the tannoy, it was the one you hear at remembrance services. Not sure what the reason for it was perhaps to raise the spirits of the exhibitors.
I did a quick tour of all the halls before a more leisurely one to get an idea of what was about. The things that I enjoyed most are described below.
Velo Polo has a better ring than Bike Polo, was the one spectacle that I enjoyed the most. Three people to each team ride around on bikes with polo sticks. I figured most of rules out: a goal can only be scored using the small end of the head end, it can’t be pushed with the side of the hammer head. If you put your foot down you have to touch wall at the side centre of the court. Winner is first to 5 or highest score after 2 by 10 minute halves, when side do not swap ends. Sudden death if there is a draw at full time.
The games is quite fast and the cyclists are very skilled. Most were on fixies. The teams were from Europe by invitation, France and Geneva were mentioned.
Go ape had a very long zip wire, but I could not be bothered to join the queue. Andy Rouse and Joe Cornish shared a stand selling their photo’s and books of photo’s.
I happened upon a stand where Stuart Conway was publicising his attempt at the cycle round the world record, which is now 96 days, which tens of days less that Mark Beaumont’s record set some years ago. Apparently there will be a few riders attempting it at the same time although not by the same route.
The boat show had the usual wares. Some of the boats were massive and only just fitted beneath the roof struts of the building. I looked around a couple there is a serious amount of luxury that gets built into them there boats. There were some demonstrations of rope work which I found interesting, the guys doing it make it look so easy.
I had lentil curry and rice for lunch from the Indian food retailer.
My parking was about to run out whilst I watched one of the Velo Polo semi-finals, so I had to go before the traffic warden got to my car. All in all it was a great day out, I will return next year.