I've just finished reading Far From the Sodding Crowd, the iconoclastic guidebook to 'uncommonly British days out' by Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Alex Morris and Joel Morris. It's the sequel to their 2005 Bollocks to Alton Towers (try asking for that in a loud voice at your local library). Unsurprisingly for a guidebook written by the people behind spoof local newspaper The Framley Examiner, it's a humorous but also poignant guide to some of the more eccentric sites that tourists can visit. It discusses the joys of visiting such places as Whipsnade Tree Cathedral and the Bubblecar Museum in Lincolnshire, and argues convincingly that these have far more to offer than increasingly standardised tourist visits to theme parks and the like. The authors cover two sport sites, one in each book: the completely unofficial Beckham Trail run by the London Borough of Waltham Forest ; and, in the second book, the Partick Thistle stadium tour, which they see as an antidote to the corporate gloss and high prices of similar events available at a Premiership ground near you.

There are many ways in which we can celebrate the places at which sport happened in the past. Stadium tours, halls of fame, and museums are the obvious ways, and there are many excellent examples of all of these. My current favourite is the River and Rowing Museum at Henley-on-Thames, which successfully combines the related stories of the river as a place for sport and leisure and a place for commerce and industry. But we can also get more local, and recognise that an awful lot of the events that have made up the history of sport have happened in rather ordinary places. Not every site is a field of dreams - or, indeed, even a field. Yet this doesn't mean that they are not worth visiting. You won't necessarily get the reception and information that you would in a museum, but you can - with some imagination and an eye for landscapes and details - get a sense of history. In the spirit of Far From the Sodding Crowd, and in tribute to its authors' ability to make museums dedicated to gas, salt, and paperweights sound fascinating, here are a few suggestions of my own for off the beaten track sports history days out. These are not in any order, and are just a few of the 'uncommonly British' ways that you could get in touch with the past of sport in an ordinary and inexpensive way.

1. Walk - or run - part (or why not all?) of a historic marathon route. The London Olympic route from 1908 is a good one, as it's from here that the 26 miles and 385 yard distance comes from. The route goes from Windsor Castle to the BBC Media Village at White City in Shepherd's Bush. Use the route description form the Official Report as your guide, and relive the drama of Pietri, Hayes, Hefferon and Longboat through Slough, Ruislip, Harlesden, and Wormwood Scrubs. Falling over and being helped up by a stweard is optional. The BBC Media Village is built on the site of the stadium, and they've put in a plaque on the wall and a marker on the ground to show where the finishing line was.

2. Swim in an interwar open air pool. Maybe September isn't the best time to be suggesting this (although some heated ones are open all year, like the one at Hampton), but this is a great way into the living recreational lives of communities, and for those of us who swim only indoors now, a reminder of what it was like in the past.

3. Discover an old racecourse. There are plenty around, and they always show up on Ordnance Survey maps. In many cases, some evidence of the track survives, and you can get a sense of the place's scale: Southampton Common is good for this. At some, like Stockbridge in Hampshire, buildings have survived, put to other uses. In some cases, you'll wonder why people chose such out of the way and inaccessible places to race and bet: my favourite for this is the one on top of Hergest Ridge on the Herefordshire/Powys border. Use maps and local guidebooks to get a sense of how these courses related to the towns and villages that they served.

4. Visit a pub in which sports history was made. Wray Vamplew and Tony Collins' Mud, Sweat and Beers is a wonderful exploration of the historical links between pubs and sport, and there are hundreds of pubs around the country that have a sporting past. In some cases, the pubs were the focus for sport, such as The Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden (boxing), or The Fighting Cocks in Dartford (you can work out the sporting connection here for yourself). Plenty of sports clubs and governing bodies have historic links with pubs that are still open, so try out The Bat and Ball Inn at Clanfield in Hampshire for the Hambledon cricket experience, or The George in Huddersfield for rugby league heritage.

Let me know your suggestions.