Despite having a bad throat and a bit of a cold, I decided I would go to the Outdoor Show at Excel in London. The show coincides with the Bike show and the London Boat show, and the entrance fee to one gets you into all three.
I set off at about 09:00 and headed round the M25 then followed the signs to City Airport I think it took me in on the A13. Things got a bit hairy when I got closer to my destination as I was running out of diesel, the car said I had 30miles in the tank and the sat nav said 20miles to go. I decided I would stop at the first petrol station, trouble is we did not seem to pass one. To cut a long story short I had 12 miles left in the tank when I stopped at an out of town shopping park. Probably around Newham somewhere, but it is not my neck of the woods so I can;t tell you for sure.
I arrived at Excel just after 10 and the queues for the parking tickets were long, but I found a space under the halls then walked back to the area where most cars were parked, and everyone had already got their tickets, and found a machine with no queue, then paid £15 for 5 hours parking, maybe it would have been cheaper by train?
I found the exit to the halls and joined a short queue of 1 to but my ticket, £18! The person on the desk asked me which show I was going to see, I said I thought you got access to all shows for the price of one. He told me that was right but that 3 companies were selling the tickets and I had to choose one, I chose the Bike Show. Excel is a well designed exhibition atrium, running up the middle of two halls. It has a food establishments of each side and seating areas in the middle, a bit like the a long piazza.
About three quarters of the halls were open and the boat show took up a whole half of the total area then the Outdoor show and Bike show took up the other half. The Bike and outdoor show merged into one about halfway across the single hall they occupied.
I started in the bike show because it was the closet to where I had entered, there were, well, lots of stalls selling bikes or bike products. I headed over to an area where they were doing stunt bike demo’s and watched some great jumps and trailing by to guys. It always amazes me what you can do with a simple bicycle. Show over I looked round some more of the bikes and found some more lights for Helen’s bike, they are perspex rods that light up red and flash and fit to down stays on the back of the bike. The guy selling them gets them from the states but had run out, he gave me his card and I will have to phone later in the week to place an order.
The outdoor show was mainly a mix of walking holidays and clothes manufacturers/shops displaying their wares. In a little area between the two there was a set of stalls selling totally unrelated stuff, like the sharpest kitchen knives in the world, the best sandwich toaster, the best set of diamond tipped drills, all complete with the salesmen with the gift of the gab. I saw no less that three stalls selling the She Wee!.
There was also a lot of climbing related stalls, selling the usual equipment. I hung around for a while and watched the men and women’s UK bouldering competition that was going on. It is very clever stuff they do, all about balance and poise rather than brute strength, for the women especially.
I had a chat on a stall that had some leaflets of walks in London, and was promoting an NHS Site called Walk4Life.info which allows you to find walks in your area and also allows you to create walks. I will give it a try, as it would be really great to be able to create one of my walks and link to it from the blog.
I then moved over to the boat show side which is about twice the size, there are some interesting stalls with demonstrations about splicing ropes, simulations of GPS linked radar navigation, sails, boats, holidays etc. I took a good look around. One of the two halls was devoted to boats, some of them very big. The usual manufacturers were there Sunseeker, Princess, Fairline and Beneteau showing off their big power boats, and luxury yachts. You if you could be bothered you could queue up to go on board, and have a look inside, as long as you took your shoes off first. I took a look in one of the large sailing boats it had a living area, a double bedroom at the back with en suite, and two smaller bedrooms at the front, very nice but my salary would not stretch to the £900,000 needed.
Outside the halls there is a marina which contained some second hand boats for sale and three of the very largest new boats which I guess they could not get into the main halls.
During my travels I spotted two celerities, first was Dominic Littlewood who was there is a woman, and was a VIP guest on the Sunseeker stand. Then I saw Ben Fogle who was on the stand selling the boots with his name on them by CÀRN.
By 15:00 I had had enough so headed back. I headed west towards central London and ended up driving through the newly built olympic stadiums which look very impressive. I eventually got back at 16:30 tired but glad I had made the effort and got out.