Wednesday 2 May - London

Last day in London before our tour tomorrow. Both of us had things our to-see list that we hadn't done yet, but those places weren't the same, so myself and Libe both got a leave pass for the day and headed our separate ways.

One thing that might stand out is that I haven't done anything sporting yet in London. There's one notable omission in particular - Lords, the home of cricket. The ground is really in the suburbs, much like a old suburban ground like those that prevailed in the AFL for such a long time. In fact, there is a large number of homes that are on the same, large block that the ground is. In terms of size, both of the ground, and the combination of the ground and and its surrounds, would be dwarfed by the MCG.

Walking in was like being a little kid again. I don't think I've actually been as excited on this trip as when I walked into the ground.

The Lords tour starts in the Museum, and, as it cannot always do, took us into the famous Long Room. It was interesting to be shown the route that the players walk onto the ground via, right through the room and through a door in the middle of it. You just couldn't do it anywhere else, in any other sport, due to security being a problem, however in the sanctity of the MCC Members it's not an issue.

The ground is surrounded by a real variety of stands and structures. In particular, the media centre at the opposite end of the ground to the Members Pavilion dominates it. We had a trip up into the media centre, from which I confirm that the view of the ground is exceptional.

It was good that there was a game on, albeit only an MCC v MCC Young Cricketers one dayer. The pitch being used was number 1 of 18 on the very big square, which means it was on the very left of the square as you'd look at it from the pavilion. This meant that the boundary on one side was tiny, perhaps only 12-15 metres between the fielding restrictions circle and the boundary. The international pitches in the middle of the square, when used, would result in a ground that would be a terrific size for cricket.

As I'm sure most who'd seen the ground would agree, the slope on it from left to right (as the members would look at it) is quite pronounced, massive by today's standards. Our guide told us that the drop caused by the slope was about 2 metres in height.

Overall, a magical place. The next thing is to get there to watch some real cricket. The 2009 Ashes is beckoning (as well as a tour to India to follow the boys around - that's certainly on my essential life experiences list as well).

Tried to get into both The Oval and Emirates Stadium / Highbury (the home of Arsenal), however the former was not open to the public and the latter's last tour had already left; Emirates Stadium last for the day one left at 3pm while Highbury has nearly been completely torn down. There were few remnants left of the old Highbury unfortunately, otherwise it would've been great to see. To call its location quaint would hafve been an understatement - if I've said above that Lords is in the suburbs, I'd have to say Highbury was in someone's backyard. It's amazing how tight that ground must have been in all aspects; proximity to the homes surrounding it, the number of people that would've crammed in there to see a club with such a huge following play, and how close the players were to the players.

Off to the Globetrotter Inn in the arvo, from where we will start our tour of Europe in the morning. Within an hour, we were off on a pub crawl with a crowd that was 90% Aussie, but led by a British bird who had more stories than than the Empire State Building. It was a good way to introduce ourselves to a few of the crew who will join us for the tour tomorrow.

I've actually changed this blog a bit, for the better. Instead of posting a few pics here of each day, I'm uploading all my pics, and hopefully all of Libe's as well onto the website below. There'll be a few comments about the pics as well. This means that there might be a few ordinary shots on there, but I'll try to keep those off there. The website is:

http://picasaweb.google.com/milky42

The pics will be in date order, so hopefully you can find them easily enough on there.

You may need to sign up to see the photos, I'm not 100% sure yet, but hopefully it'll be worth it.

I'll try to put a few more blogs I'm behind here soon - the rest of Peru, Miami, San Fran, Vegas and London to come!