AOG - Day 14 Goodbye to the AOG

Today was the final day of a really enjoyable Alternative Olympic Games. It was mostly a  day of  celebration, but there was a one minute silence for the awful fall in population numbers of butterflies, bees and wasps this year in the UK. There was only one medal opportunity today, the sea frisbee retrieving relay and as always it was won by the border collies - see Extra. One element of the AOG I always enjoy is the introduction to the public of potential future Olympians, and today we were introduced to three kittens, representing cats being allowed into the AOG for the first time at the next Games. It's a controversial move given the independence of cats, but fingers are crossed for its success. 

I went over to Weybourne for a walk before it got too hot and there were already about 30 cars in the car park at 8:15. I wanted to see the platform that has arrived (see Extra) to enable the laying of pipes to the shore. The platform is called a 'jack up' and is 600m from the shore. Tug boats will tow floating pipes to the jack up and then the pipe will be layed to shore. The piping will act as a protective sleeve for this stage of the offshore cable which will run from the new Hornsea 3 wind farm when operational. Whilst walking on the cliff path I overtook a couple who were taking their three kittens for a walk, they were only four weeks old. I would have loved to get better photos, but every time I crouched down to take a photo, they came running over and I only had my long lens. That's something I've never seen before!

The Olympics Closing Ceremony is due to start soon. I have so enjoyed the Games, the first since London in our time zone. A good performance by Team GB, ending 7th in the medal table (in order of gold medals). I thoroughly enjoyed watching the end of the women's marathon this morning with Sifan Hassan of The Netherlands winning Gold from a sprint at the end of 26 miles! But the full story is that in this Games she'd also won two Bronze medals in the 5,000m (5th Aug) and the 10,000m (9th Aug)! Also from The Netherlands is Harrie Lavreysen who won 3 Gold medals in the Cycling. These helped the country end above Team GB in 6th place in the medals table, with only a population of c18m - what an achievement! Australia and New Zealand also do brilliantly when you look at their placing by the size of the population. My favourite new sports I watched were the sport climbing and the kite sailing. Well done to all those who competed and made the event so enjoyable.