There’s bike races and there’s the Tour de France. The world’s greatest cycle race is approximately 3600 km long and runs across France and its neighbours. This year, the itinerary is taking riders from Rotterdam to Paris, via the Alps and Pyrenees – the scenic route. It lasts three weeks and will finish in Paris on 25th July. 22 teams and 219 riders started it on 3rd July. How many will finish? (more…)
It’s amazing how time flies. It seems like just five minutes since Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher each contrived to miss a penalty against Portugal in the 2006 FIFA World Cup (c) as we must now call it to send England crashing out in quarter final glory.
Now it’s already South Africa 2010 and we’re ready to go through the whole thing again. For at least the first two weeks there’ll be three games a day to distract us and prevent us from getting anything done. If you hate the whole jamboree you’re lucky, just turn the television and the radio off and you you can ignore it all. If you’ve more than a passing interest, you’ll need help combining work and distraction. And getting some work done.
I’ve seen every game of the last three World Cups and have developed some stategies to combine working well and keeping up to date. And yes, I know this is tongue in cheek, but for some it’s a real problem! (more…)
The World Cup 2010 is upon us. It seems like 5 minutes since the announcement that South Africa had won the right to hold the event and it’s taking place already. Now we can dare to hope that the (now) 44 years of hurt can be ended, the false profits and the bad pundits will be rolled out and we will yet again be lamenting the fact that England can’t get beyond the quarter finals of a major competition. (more…)
USA, Algeria, Slovenia? The World Cup draw has been “kind” lets say. Thousands of people would have started making plans on the evening of 4th December to travel to South Africa in June and July 2010. World Cup fever starts here. So what should you be thinking of before setting off on a trip like that to the other side of the world.
1. Take warm clothes. Just because it’s in June and July, don’t forget it’s in the Southern Hemisphere so it’ll be winter. It could be as cold as it was standing on the terraces at Fulham’s Craven Cottage before they built up the stand to stop the cold air blowing in off the Thames. The effect was that of a wind tunnel. Freezing. (more…)
