CELEBRATION plans are underway for when the Olympic Torch relay threads its way through Bridport and west Dorset.

Preparations are set to be stepped up after the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) announced details of the route, times and runners.

Torchbearers will carry the Olympic flame through Bridport at 2.46pm on Thursday, July 12 before it heads to Chideock at 3.13pm, Lyme Regis at 3.35pm and Burton Bradstock at 4.52pm.

Communities are excited by the arrival but there is also disappointment that none of the torchbearers will be from the area.

Bridport Mayor David Rickard said the idea was to create as much of a party atmosphere as possible.

“We hope to involve schools and hope everybody will come and line the route.”

The torch will be carried by runners and walkers on some sections of the route but on others it will travel in a car in a convoy between stops.

It will come to Bridport from Dorchester and Winterbourne Abbas on the A35 before going to Lyme and back through Bridport in the cavalcade on the A35 to the Crown roundabout and then along the coast road to Burton Bradstock.

It will then make its way to Weymouth and Portland for an evening celebration. It is expected to come through Bridport town centre on its way to Chideock and Lyme on the outward leg.

The torchbearers for Bridport are Katie Norman and Peter Hellawell from Bournemouth, and Laura Kerr from Woodbridge, near Sherborne.

The Chideock torchbearers are Alexis Major, from Bournemouth, Paul Thompson from Sherborne and Sarah Butt from Wimborne.

Those in Burton Bradstock are Betty Port from Dorchester, Sandra Bowers from Salisbury and Rosie Barfoot from Stratton. The runners for Lyme are also not local.

Trevor Chambers, from Morcombelake, who was picked as a torchbearer, will be on a leg through Hamworthy in Poole.

Coun Rickard said: “I am rather disappointed that nobody from the Bridport area is a torchbearer.

“I am not impressed at all.”

Mr Chambers, 69, said that he was looking forward to his moment.

He said that he would have preferred to run a local section but that it was not negotiable.

He said: “They have 8,000 runners and it is obviously quite a logistical task. I am pleased to get a leg at all and am not going to argue.”

See the full route at london2012.

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