The Olympics come to Walsall

I decided to give the Walsall Arboretum parkrun a whirl this morning -gets me out of bed at least- with company from Harsh and support from Stacebob and Rich.

As we were going to be in Walsall early we decided to hang around in town for the arrival of the Olympic torch at lunchtime. I missed it in Stafford (up in Scotland) and I won't be able to make it to West Brom or Birmingham later on this evening because I'm at work.

With these things towns do like to have a bit of a celebration and amongst all the usual stuff, in the centre of town, was one of the strangest sights I've seen in Walsall...
...a wrestling ring...
...with actual wrestlers...
I think we were starting to wonder what had been put in our coffees.

Despite this very nearly making my blip for today, I figured I should actually go for one of the torch itself.

After giving it a lot of thought, and a positive comment from Roy, I've decided to change my torch blip and go with my original gut feeling. After all people just plodding along with the torch are 10 a penny and mine wasn't even worth that. I really liked this one, despite the overexposure, as it's the torch bearer, Zoe Ruane, outside Walsall Town Hall standing amidst the throng that accompanies the torch including the mayor, some councillors, and a professional cameraman (bottom right). But she just looks pleased and proud and I should have gone with this from the start.

I really don't like changing my blip but in this case I think I'm right.
A bit of tinkering with the contrast and lighting has brought out the gold of the torch...and it's so much more interesting than this