Follow the brown signs

Not Britain’s biggest fan does her own torch relay

Recently I entered Visit Britain’s “Fan in a Van” competition, where entrants were asked to tell the judges why they should be the person to follow the Olympic flame around Britain in a campervan on a 70 day adventure, blogging and tweeting about all the cool places they pass on the way. In a bid to win I cajoled my boyfriend into embarking on a 24 hour 600 mile round trip to go on a steam train up Snowdon, Wales (lots of sheep; picture of said sheep and boyfriend attached) and make a video as part of the application (the hastily put together and rather amateurish attempt is here if you’re interested).  Unfortunately, the fact that I write this blog on a quiet Saturday lunchtime on my restaurant computer means just one thing: I didn’t win (*upside down smile, blows raspberries*). Maybe those judges just didn’t look at my website or maybe they were scared of it’s brilliance, who knows why they couldn’t see that I am, quite literally, Britain’s biggest fan, but after being told that I wasn’t the lucky winner I got to feeling a little dejected. The problem with ploughing all your energies into doing things that you really love and give a big hoot about is that when things don’t turn out quite how you’d like them to it makes you feel pretty shiz about what it is you’re doing (more raspberries and long faces).

Not one for feeling shiz for very long though, I decided that despite not doing the trip physically I could do my own little ode to the torch relay by way of the humble brown tourist sign (no surprises there) and follow the torch online through the technologically amazing London 2012 Olympic website (even thinking about the geomashups behind that site makes me feel queazy). If you click on the torch relay page you can actually see where the torch is live (which I think is ace, have a look). So what I’ll be doing every day for the next 70 days is having a look at where the torch is and giving a big shout out to an attraction or facility near where the torch is passing with a brown sign.

You can nominate yourself if you are such an attraction or if you know any that should be shouted about, but really the point is getting a really great mix of varied and interesting places all long on the brown sign way featured on the blog. Get involved by using #brownsign on Twitter, tweet me @lovebrownsigns or contact me via the website.

May the Follow The Brown Signs Torch Relay commence…!