Queen Elizabeth Park

Last weekend O.H. and I went over to East London to see the Olympic Park. Now we avoided this whole area during the Olympics in 2012 as I hate crowds but now that the park has re-opened we thought we should check it out.

Now this is Stratford. You pass this to get into the park. To me it's a little soulless but I keep forgetting that the area was developed initially for a specific event... 

So this is the swimming pool. It was huge, you could say it was Olympic size.... 

The Orbit by Anish Kapoor. Now I'm a big fan of Anish Kapoor's stuff but this left me a little cold. We did think about going up it but baulked at the £15 entry fee...

Now I was disappointed that although billed a 'park' there was not as much green as I was expecting but there were pockets including this area in front of the Stadium which will soon become the home of West Ham. 

 I was blown away by this hill of orange poppies which was just magical. I've never seen orange ones before and they just left me entranced. 

This is the velodrome both outside

and in (though not much going on)

There was quite a lot of sculpture dotted throughout the complex. I really liked this using a red telephone box. 

And the mirrors used on the bridges which criss crossed the waterways. 

And there were several of these mirrored spheres which were fun.

And there were quite a few patches of flowers 

I loved this combination of grasses and alliums in front of the velodrome 

And more of the wonderful poppies - so Wizard of Oz... 

And oriental poppies too

And how's  this for trying to liven up a concrete area, geraniums sprawling out as far as the eye can see. Love it!

So that's that. Our first visit to the park. While we both agreed it was nice with all things that are new, especially involving a garden, take time to establish so we probably won't be going back for a while when hopefully everything has had time to settle.