Sunday 15 October 2017

Sunday Snap – The Orbit

We were looking at a horse water trough dedicated to the memory of the founder of Our Dumb Friend's League for last week's Sunday Snap. I asked by what name it is now known as and the answer is

Blue Cross

Leading the horse to water with the right answer were Kara, Soma, Anne and Susan.

This summer we went to a few sporting events and one of them was The World Athletics Championships. As we left the stadium after the opening night action had come to an end The Orbit was lit up quite magnificently outside. The official name is the ArcelorMittal Orbit which is a nod to the steel company owned by Lakshmi Mittal. Often cited as 'Britain's richest man' Mr Mittal contributed £16 million of the original £19.1 million cost.

The design was the winning proposal for a tower to complement the main stadium for Britain's biggest ever sporting event. Standing at nearly 115m tall the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, wanted a design that would be as iconic as the Eiffel Tower. Although visually stunning when lit up at night the design did not go down well with the critics. Many saw it as vanity project of Boris Johnson's and felt the final cost of £22.7 million could have been better spent elsewhere. However it was deemed worthy enough to make it onto page 24 of the British passport.

The Orbit was designed with an observation platform which paying visitors could either walk up the 455 steps or ascend to in a lift. Visitor numbers were not as high as to be expected in order to recoup the running costs. In 2015 it was reported to be losing £520,000 a year. To entice additional visitors in 2016 the world's biggest and longest tunnel slide was installed within it. This week's question is

What is the name of the stadium that The Orbit is next to?

We were joined last week by Kara and a Star Wars themed day at Winchester Science Centre and onboard at Blog Camp. Anne has been crocheting for Christmas. The spectacular Harvest Moon was captured by Susan. Finally, Soma introduced us to Glen the sporran wearing penguin.

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Sunday Snap

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3 comments:

  1. It used to be called Olympic Stadium but I think it's just London Stadium now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think it's London Stadium. It looks nice lit up but I do think it's ugly, it looks like a fairground ride gone wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Olympic Park I think but i so want to ride this slide!!

    ReplyDelete

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