MILES WELL TRAVELLED
Pete was well known for his love of Southend United but he crossed paths with many more due to devotion to groundhopping. Despite having a successful career and being married to Cathy, he somehow managed to see more than 300 games per season, clocking up thousands of miles and hundreds of new ground visits, both in the UK and abroad. A check of his Futbology app profile shows 5,810 matches, 3,021 grounds and 55 countries. The app also shows that he is the number one ranked Southend United fan. He played a pivotal role in groundhopping expeditions to some of the less glamourous parts of Europe such as Romania( Football in Heaven) and Serbia. His love of visiting grounds across Europe shone brightly, so much so that he shared his passion with others through contributing many articles to the Football Weekends magazine.
Pete maintained a popular website blog under the name The Itinerant Football Watcher( peterrmiles. wordpress. com), where he detailed his many exploits and showcased some of the excellent photographs he took on his travels. This blog has entries dating back to 2012 and is a useful source of information on literally thousands of grounds. Hopefully it will remain online in perpetuity.
Above: A screenshot of Pete’ s Futbology app stats
On 27 December 2025 Pete was at Myra Shay on the outskirts of Bradford to see the NCEL game between Albion Sports and Thackley. Incredibly, attending this fixture completed all current senior English football grounds for Pete. That’ s every ground from the Premier League to Step 6 of the Non-League Pyramid. There are very few people that have achieved this milestone, but Pete wasn’ t one to shout about his achievements, and apart from his usual social media posts about the game, he made no reference to it.
This humbleness was one of Pete’ s many qualities. He was generous with his time and was always happy to help and guide others. His contribution to groundhopping and researching and recording the history of football grounds and Southend United will be sorely missed. But most of all, his warmth, humour and encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject will make going to games without him, much less fulfilling.
Thank you for everything you did Pete, Rest in Peace mate. 4