Inside The 2012 Olympic Park: 540 Days To Go

With the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics a mere 540 days away, we took another tour around the gigantic building site that is the Olympic park in east London.

After several years, the gargantuan project is now nearing completion. The Velodrome, has already been delivered to LOCOG and the keys to the other venues are due sometime this summer, when test runs will begin on the facilities with real and mock sporting events.

Another big date for LOCOG is 15 March, when 6.6m tickets go on sale for a period of six weeks. Details of all 650 events will be made public later this month but there's no rush, as allocations will be made after 26 April.

Our guide reeled off some mind boggling Olympian figures reminding us that the site is 500 acres (that's 357 football pitches), that there are 12,000 construction workers on site while there will be 14,700 athletes there during the Games and that 2,000 trees will be planted in the park. The swimming pool will be only the second true Olympic-size pool in London after Hillingdon's opened last year - the one in Crystal Palace is a few centimetres too short because of its tiling!

To get an idea of the immensity of the site for yourself and absorb more facts and figures you can book a tour by calling 0300 2012 001 but please note that there is high demand and a waiting list.

The London 2012 Olympic Games will run between 27 July and 12 August 2012 while the Paralympic Games will be staged from 29 August till 9 September 2012. www.london2012.com

Pictures by zefrog. The Olympic Delivery Authority is very particular on security so these pictures were all taken from the safety of a bright pink single-decker bus.

We previously toured the Olympic Park in May and October 2009.