Browse Olympic Torch Relay Gallery
Editor’s Blog: Eagle eyed photographer, Ron Dear, captures the moment that caught the zeitgeist yesterday, Tuesday July 17, as the Olympic torch roadshow came streaming down the Eastbourne Road and straight into the history books.
With a backdrop of the 1066 stores, a thousand years of invasion, smugglers and holidaymakers, plus the odd famous impressionist painter thrown into the colourful paintpot, Pevensey Bay knows a thing or two about how to throw a party and put out the welcome mat to people from foreign shores.
Yesterday it added to the guest book, the Ancient Greeks who, along with the Romans and the Normans have now passed this way, standards held high, bearing gifts.
With people craning their necks to see the moment when the torches kissed, children, mums, dads and grandparents all held their breath as they watched and waited for the part of the ceremony that would seal the latest chapter in the history of the place they call ‘the hidden jewel in the Crown of Sussex’.
Councillor Dianne Dear, publisher of Bay Life, commented that ‘the place was heaving, as many people as Pevfest’ and with her tongue firmly in her cheek added ‘we couldn’t believe how many people there were, we couldn’t get off the podium, but it was lovely to see how the sun shone on the righteous!’.
A good number of people commented on what a first rate job Wealden Council had done with both the planning of the event and the clear up operation afterwards, with probationary community workers bussed in to see that the Bay was both ready for the Torch Relay and put back together again after the fun was over.
The pubs were pulling pints right through the afternoon, three deep like the podium, and the sun kept shining, as did the celebrity culture element of the proceedings, with David Beckham’s image on the side of the Samsung Road Bus and glimpsed inside one of the coaches, local much loved madcap man, Eddie Izzard, busy waving to the crowd, ready to take up the baton on the next leg of the journey to Bexhill.
Dianne summed up the afternoon with words that spoke for the whole community, ‘the atmosphere of the whole event was so lovely and the fact that so many families had come out to welcome the torch made it all so special’.
The happy atmosphere was infectious, dignatories let their hair down, the Police smiled and a mother with a daughter who had Downs sydrome had a special treat as a Policeman dismounted and stood to attention whilst their picture was taken together. As all three beamed from ear to ear, it somehow seemed to sum up the spirit of the event.
It was a day for pictures and people coming together from all walks of life to celebrate a spectacle that will, for everyone concerned, be a once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of a unique occasion that will be remembered as long as people live.
The Olympic spirit is alive and well after more than two thousand years. and proud historic little Pevensey Bay took its place in the limelight along with so many other communities in an event that has joined places and people right across the land in an uplighted message of celebration and sharing.
As the torches kissed, the moment lit up the Bay. The postcards home, in the form of the new fangled text messages and tweets that have taken the place of letterwriting, nonetheless carried the same message as they have always done since time immemorial, ‘Wish You Were Here’.
In the original story, the gift of fire was stolen from the Gods, the torch kindled by the light of the Sun. There was most certainly something of that re-kindled spirit abroad in Pevensey Bay on Tuesday 17 July 2012.
It was the Day that Ancient Greece came to town and captured all our hearts.
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