Since then, West Ham Football Club have taken over the lease of the stadium and moved from Upton Park in time for the start of the 2016/17 football season, but it wasn’t without controversy.

Apart from the fact that two other clubs had something to say about it (Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient), the Hammers fans weren’t too happy about it either. It maybe a nice new shiny stadium, but it’s not their spiritual home – and the pies are more expensive too!

Other sporting areas inside the park include the Copper Box Arena, (which was used primarily for Handball during the Olympics and now basketball as well), and the Lea Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre.

Since the Olympics, the sporting facilities have been used for a multitude of national events as well as for local amateur use, which is good to see, but the park is not just used for sport.

The total area is larger than Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens combined, but can be considered in two separate parts as well.

The South Park has most of the tourist related activities, whilst the North Park is being turned primarily into a conservation area. The River Lea which runs through the park used to be an industrial valley before it became neglected. I have to admit that I haven’t explored this part of the park much yet, but if what I’ve read is true, then this area could well be one of the success stories to come out of the legacy of the Olympic Games.

The Lea also runs through the South Park, where the Carpenters Road Locks have been renovated and wildfowl and fishermen fight over what’s beneath the surface of the Waterworks River.

Now known as the Stratford Waterfront, the waterside has been smartened up enough for boats to take passengers on short cruises. Unfortunately, unlike the inhabitants of Clay Lane, not all the rats have moved out yet.

As you would expect, there are walking and cycling trails in amongst the new habitats planted with native species, but the manicured gardens have a variety of plants from around the world which look brilliant, but would look even better if there was a little less hardscaping surrounding them.

There’s still one thing I haven’t mentioned – The ArcelorMittal Orbit. This is one of the most visited things in the park, and even if you didn’t want to see it, you will – because it’s the tallest sculpture in the country. Tallest, biggest, or whatever, doesn’t always translate into being the best, and people have different views about it. This mangled jumble of steel tubes won’t be pleasing on the eye to everybody, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and strangely enough I was more impressed than I thought I would be – not by its beauty, but by its ingenuity. It’s quite remarkable how all those tubes fit together.

If that doesn’t impress you then the far-reaching views from the viewing platform might. Unfortunately, from a photographic point of view, the conditions were less than ideal when I was up here, so I’m afraid I can’t show what you’re missing.

One thing I didn’t bother with, although there was no shortage of willing participants, was the slide back down to the bottom. I’m no Olympian and opted to take the lift instead.

One of the things that would have been important to the people working out the legacy of the games would have been what to do with the Olympic Village.

When the athletes left, plans were put in place to ensure that locals would benefit from the properties that were left behind, but the reality of the new East Village, as it’s called, has fallen short of the ambition. As some people would no doubt have predicted, the gentrification of Stratford has pushed property prices upwards out of the reach of locals, and the target of 50% affordable housing in the East Village has been revised downwards to between 20% and 31%.

On a more optimistic note an Arts Hub is planned which will include an outpost of the V&A Museum, the Saddlers Wells Ballet Company and the University of the Arts London.

This will sit alongside the existing modern Westfield shopping Centre and new local Stratford and Stratford International stations. The whole area will become known as Stratford City.

So, is Ken Livingstone still smiling? He has to be. He probably isn’t over the moon about locals being squeezed out of the housing market, but that in itself is an indication on how the area has changed for the better – but what do I think?

Well, it would appear that many lessons have been learned from past mistakes, and although it would be easy to criticize some aspects of the handling of the project, on the whole I’m pleased to see how the area has been transformed – although I acknowledge that it wouldn’t have pleased everybody. On that basis I award the organizers a silver medal – but I’m sorry to say that I’m still cynical about the whole Olympic concept in its present form.

The docks have been generally smartened up and a large new exhibition and international convention centre (Excel) constructed, but the area has still some way to go to before its industrial base has completely gone.

Excel was a venue for the 2012 Summer Olympics, where sports such as boxing, judo, fencing and weightlifting took place, but the main location for the London Olympics was at Stratford, an area that desperately needed a lift.

Before 2012 there would have been very little to entice tourists to this part of the city, but with the regeneration that the games provided (although not to everyone’s advantage), there are now more reasons to come here.

Apart from the great sports facilities at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, there is also an emphasis on creating an environmentally friendly habitat along the Lea Valley, and that’s not all. The adjacent Westfield shopping centre offers a major source of retail therapy, and future plans include a cultural hub which will see the likes of the Victoria & Albert Museum bring some much-needed escapism to this part of East London.

A large number of local people are in low paid work and the political allegiances are firmly in favour of the Labour Party. In the 2014 borough elections Labour won all 60 seats.

The estimated number of people living in Newham in 2017 was 348,000, and at the last count 16.7% were white British and 32% Muslim.