It’s the mid September and after a few weeks that actually felt like summer the weather today has a distinctly autumnal feel to it and the leaves on the trees are beginning to turn. The Paralympics finished last Sunday with another spectacular closing ceremony that had something to say as well as being entertaining. We had the victory parade/celebration of our (British) Olympian and Paralympian athletes on Monday. Our magical summer has drawn to a close.

Andy Murray managed to extend it by a day, missing the victory parade in the process, and Bradley Wiggins is currently on his own personal week-long victory parade round the country ( also known as the Tour of Britain cycle race), but everything is getting back to grey boring normal. On Tuesday when I got the train up to London, for the first time in about six weeks, there were no Games-makers in their purple and pink uniforms, just slightly stressed looking people in their normal uniforms of grey business suits.

I have thoroughly enjoyed all of it and have decided to put my thoughts on it all down in a series of blog posts. I’m not sure how many there will be but I’ll start with where it began for me, in Paris on the Champs-Elysées on Sunday July the 22nd.