Games-haters will find this photo grimly gratifying: a London bus bought up by Locog sitting in traffic on a road - Lower Clapton Road in Hackney, close to my home - that has been designated a "proposed diversion route" (pdf) under Transport for London's Olympic travel plans.
The particular reason for the bus's slow progress this lunchtime (Monday) was an overturned car at the junction it was approaching, but for we host borough locals it was, perhaps, a taste of things to come. There were, by the way, about six people on that bus. Oh, and half the cops on the scene of the car crash were from Greater Manchester. Welcome to the capital, officers.
In my bit of Hackney the local Olympic presence has also taken the form of a group of visiting sports journalists moving in to the house of neighbours who've opted to flee the city for three weeks and make a few quid in the process. I bumped into a couple of the journos, Danish guys, on the street as they set off for the Olympic Park press centre for the first time, their laminated passes glinting in the sun. Their plan was to catch a bus from Clapton Pond to Stratford, which looks logical in theory but is, in my experience, the slowest way on Earth to get to Stratford. And in this heat?
Better to take a different bus to downtown Hackney and take an Overground train from Hackney Central (pdf), I advised. Or, most sensible of all, walk to the press centre instead: a picturesque route across Millfields Park and along the Lea Navigation towpath until you reach the popular local security blockade, but you'd be wanting to turn off towards the Eton Manor entrance at that point anyway, assuming hacks are allowed in that way.
They looked doubtful, but if I were them that's what I'd do. It might take them 40 minutes - 15 if they ran - but the door-to-door public transport options would be little quicker on a good day, and we're not expecting too many of those. Cycling, they could do it in no time. Perhaps I'll lend one of them my rusty old bike. Or, maybe just to get into that Games Time entrepreneurial spirit, rent them (not really). Either way, they'd get a look at Hackney Marshes on the way. When in London, walk, walk, walk wherever possible - whatever brand of trainers you wear.
