Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Wimbledon

  • London – Merton (Borough of) – Site of Wimbledon’s Plough Lane Stadium

    London – Merton (Borough of) – Site of Wimbledon’s Plough Lane Stadium

    Clicking on the above dual map makes it a more viewable size and it shows where Wimbledon’s football ground stood until relatively recently. It’s where the cursor is on the map and not the Plough Lane Stadium, which is where the club is now. The football team became quite notorious in the 1980s when they played at the original Plough Lane site, but the ground proved difficult to upgrade to meet new safety requirements of the time.

    This is what the football stadium looks like now. The old stadium, which was used by the football for first team matches between September 1912 and May 1991, was finally demolished in 2002. Safeway had wanted to build a supermarket on it, but the council faffed about a bit, so the project got delayed and then cancelled. A new more recent project has seen a large housing development built on the site of the former stadium.

    To mark the site of the former ground, this sculpture was placed on the corner of Plough Lane and Durnsford Road in 2010.

    The club’s crest is visible on the back of the sculpture, which was designed by Sam Burford. I’m not sure that I really understand what the whole sculpture is all about, but it’s useful that the site of the former stadium is marked.

  • London – Croydon (Borough of) – Trams

    London – Croydon (Borough of) – Trams

    I’ve never before used the tram service to Croydon, so this was a new experience. The network has 39 stops along 17 miles of track, connecting into the London Underground network at Wimbledon, where I caught the tram from. There are two main different trams on the network, the 23 trams of the older Bombardier CR4000 style and the 12 newer Croydon Stadler Variobahn variety. The above is the latter, and thus the newer model.

    The tram service wasn’t overly busy at Wimbledon, although it got busier towards Croydon. It was generally easy to use, although I forgot that it wasn’t the DLR and I tapped in when arriving in Croydon, which isn’t actually necessary. There is also a procedure in Wimbledon to tap in so that the system knows that the passenger used a tram and not a train.

    The service was comfortable and the journey was smooth, it’s a shame that more cities around the country can’t afford tram networks such as this. Norwich would perhaps be very well suited to such a network, although I can’t imagine how the initial funding would ever be reached. Although Norwich did have a tram system in the past, it’s very much now for larger cities only, in the UK at least.

    A tragedy took place on 9 November 2016, which became news across the world, when a driver managed to overturn a tram, killing seven people. It’s hard to imagine just how a driver could do this, but it was confirmed that it was his error that caused the incident, in what was the first tram crash in the UK since 1959 which led the death of a tram passenger. An inquest into the derailment was meant to start in October 2020, but it has now been delayed until next year.

  • London – Merton (Borough of) – Wimbledon – Two Fat Ladies

    London – Merton (Borough of) – Wimbledon – Two Fat Ladies

    This eight foot high sculpture is known as the ‘the two fat ladies’ locally and was designed by Andre Wallace. There was a near riot amongst the local denizens when it was removed in early 2012 from its previous location outside of the railway station, but, fortunately, it was just being moved whilst work was undertaken on the forecourt. The sculpture is officially known as “Walking Women”, so I’m not sure what the sculptor thinks about all of this. Hopefully he likes that the public have connected with it….

  • London – Merton (Borough of) – Wimbledon – Wibbas Down Inn

    London – Merton (Borough of) – Wimbledon – Wibbas Down Inn

    After a half-hearted attempt at the Wimbledon Heritage Walk I had a little look at what Good Beer Guide pubs there were in the area. There were none in the centre of Wimbledon, which was moderately disappointing. There was though a JD Wetherspoon, so that had to do. It’s name comes from an old spelling of Wimbledon and it’s located in a former Tesco, which is much better than a pub turned into a supermarket.

    It’s a large pub, with an entrance from both sides of the building.

    I splashed out 85p on half a pint of Shepherd Neame Bishops Finger, so no expense was spared here. A staff member came over with this pint and apologised that they had over-poured it and did I want it as a pint for no extra money? I did. Anyway, the beer was fine, at the appropriate temperature and with some fruit flavours to it.

    The pub handily has lots of plug sockets, so I got my 85p worth (even though to be fair I had already received that with a pint) by charging my devices up. I’m not entirely sure that I contributed much to Wetherspoon’s profits here, but there we go…. The reviews on TripAdvisor aren’t great, but I’m amused with reviews which start like this:

    “Known for its cheap, end of line, short shelf life beers”

    It isn’t and the rest of the review continued in this vein, ending that they left “in some fear for my well being”. Hmmm.

    This sounds more exciting though:

    “Our table was dirty so I tried to get someone to clean it, there were loads of staff that I could see but they were chatting in a corner behind the bar and a few at a table on their break. One member of staff walking around went over to the group at the table to talk to them, put one knee on a stool and proceeded to stroke her own bottom repeatedly for the next few moments whilst we are still waiting to get someone to clean our table! I eventually managed to get another person to clean it, whilst everyone else is still chatting and fondling themselves!”

    The pub didn’t reply to that one unfortunately. Although it was more entertaining than the customer who posted as their entire review on Google “went for the free water”.

    Anyway, it was all clean and organised, the staff seemed sufficiently friendly and I got a pint for 85p.