I went for my first jolly around the newly opened Olympic Park today. There still seems to be lots of sections that are closed, there are still significant building works going on, but some of the green spaces are available which is good news as this is something that Stratford is severely lacking. I was a little underwhelmed by the park. The section I was in consisted of a pleasant enough river with some good reed beds that local wildlife will, presumably, love. A couple of footpaths corkscrew their way up a little artificial hillock that I suspect the designer wanted to look like Hobbiton but actually looks more like Teletubbyland.
Having said this I am aware that I am, in general, fairly biased against the Olympics and anything to do with it, except the sport. I've no problem with people having running and jumping contests, long may they continue, but the Olympics is little more than an expensive, bloated, corrupt cartel of tax dodging business opportunities. This probably tints my view a bit. To be fair it probably just needs a year or two to bed in; it wasn't that long ago that this was a heavily polluted industrial area so ultimately it has to be a good thing that it is now a potential haven for wildlife. One definite positive that only occurred to me later on was that it is possibly a good dark sky site; there didn't appear to be any street lights in the area and no fences to keep people out so stargazing options may have just significantly improved. Obviously it's not the mountains of Paranal but as far as Stratford goes it's as good as it gets. Hopefully.
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