Football on the Meridian

How about West Ham United 's old ground at the Memorial Ground, which is still in evidence today. As the picture below shows the layout of the pitch (the lighter shade of grass) and the embankments (the darker grass coming toward the camera) are still visible. Although the didn't play here in the league, having left the ground in 1904 and joining Division One in 1919 this ground stands the closest so far to the Meridian at 0.00.33...

Have you ever seen more comprehensively "graffitied" sign posts than the ones on the "Greenway" in budleigh's photo?

The "Greenway" is in fact the path that runs along the top of the Northern Outfall Sewer which runs from Hackney Wick to Beckton - a distance of about four miles.

Designed and constructed by Joseph Balzalguette in 1858, the NOS is fed by the equally massive High Level Sewer that runs from Hampstead Hill to the Wick via Stoke Newington and Victoria (Hackney) Park, the Kilburn to Islington (via Kilburn and then the route of the Euston Road (inner ring road) out to Hackney. The Kensal Green- Bayswater - Oxford Street- Clerkenwell - Bethnal Green route. One from Chiswick - Hammersmith - Kensington - Strand - The City and Aldgate, feeding the wonderful old pumping station of Abbey Mills (very close to Budleigh's photo) and finally the one from Hammersmith via Fulham - The Kings Road, Cheyne Walk and then forms what is now the Chelsea Embankment and features another lovely old pumping station at Chelsea Bridge and on underneath Millbank - Victoria Embankment - Tower Hill - Whitechapel - Stepney and Bow to Abbey Mills.

If you ever get the chance to access the London Sewers they make a fascinating walk (no, honestly!) and the fantastic gleaming brass and wrought iron machine workings and architecture of Abbey Mills Pumping Station are out of this world!

There is also a Southern Outfall Sewer (SOS) on the other side of the river, but us Northerners don't openly talk of the "other side"!

The Greenway provides access to walkers and cyclists and panoramic views over the flat lands of East London and currently a wonderful vantage point to observe progress on the Olympic Stadium and surrounding Olympic Park as they rapidly take shape.

Also, referring to the photo, the West Ham Memorial Ground is nowadays home to West Ham RFC and you can see their club house in the foreground whilst in the background to the left are the "Manhattonesque" features of Canary Wharf and to the distant right the high rise of the Gherkin and Tower 42 (the former NatWest Tower) in The City. Next door to the "Mem" is the East London Cemetery where my stepdaughter is buried.

Phew, in typical TFF fashion we seem to have strayed a long way from the Dripping Pan and it's location on the Greenwich Meridian!

NB: I was only discussing subterranean London (as you do!) in the car on the way down for the Coventry game the other day when I revealed the rivetting "Merse Fact" that it is possible to walk beneath the streets of London from Buckingham Palace out to the East End Postal Sorting Office on the Whitechapel Road next door to the The Royal London Hospital utilising the "escape route" of a combination of the sewers, the postal undergound transport system and other tunnels constructed during the build up to the Second World War. I even used the vision to illustrate the point of a tipsy Queen Mum emerging blinking into the day light up the cellar stairs of the Blind Beggar - hat askew and covered in mud and shite; at Mile End Gate demanding a gin and dubonnet before tottering back home to Buck House!

For anyone who has ever doubted the wisdom of constructing the Olympic Park, click on to: http:// river-lea.co.uk/200s/stratford/stratford13.html and witness Peter Marshall's photographic record of an end of an era to the scruffy, down at heel but strangely compelling detritus ridden fascination of the "Arse End of Chemical London" (my description, not his)- Old Ford, Fish Island and the Back River area between Bow and Stratford...............wonderful rusty, crusty old East End as it's reclaimed by nature and none more so than the day when some bored workers at my former garage put a real life crocodile in the River Lea (it probably died of pollution ) and telephoned The Sun (who else?) with an exclusive

I wasted time on Google Earth this morning doing a similar thing when I should've been doing something much, much more important and profitable... But I was too embarrassed to put anymore on here lest people think I don't have a life and spend all my time hanging around railway stations in my anorak, pencil & pad in hand!!

So you mean 2 people can be that sad!!

Royston Town must be pretty close.

OK, make that 3 sad people.