LIKE Grimsby or Shittlehopeburn, though the latter is much smaller and can be deleted according to taste, Pitsea may be unfortunately named. Certainly it has its detractors.

“Dante himself could not have written about modern Pitsea, it’s well beyond the power of his darkest visions,” says a piece on the Top Ten Worst Places To Live in Britain website. The name may leave little to the imagination, either.

Its population, it’s supposed, is basically Chavs v Travs, its environment bleak, its incinerator even bigger than its sewage works. Its most famous citizens include Q-Boy (“Britain’s leading gay rapper”) and Carla Brown, said to have been a Page 3 model.

It is thus with some curiosity – apprehension, possibly – that the Railroad to Wembley heads last Saturday for the town tagged onto the hem of Basildon, formerly Basildon New Town, in unexotic Essex. It’s the FA Vase semi-final first leg, Bowers and Pitsea v Morpeth Town.

Once, it’s said, Pitsea was just a ramshackle village in a swamp. Then the post-war planners arrived and it got worse.

But it had, or at least had, the biggest supermarket in Europe.

WE’RE on the 7:27 from Darlington, across London on the Circle Line to Aldgate and then a short walk to Fenchurch Street station – on the Monopoly board between the purples and the oranges and in the capital in the heart of the City.

Gary Brand, our native guide, points out towering monuments of commerce known thereabouts as the Walkie Talkie, the Cheese Grater and the Gherkin.

However greatly the rest of the nation may hurtle towards seven-day business, trading in the City still stops on Friday teatime. The streets are almost deserted, the pub on the station – which sells something called wasabi peas – yet emptier.

We’re having a livener when a pigeon strolls in like it owns the place, takes a dander around the bar and settles beside the bandit. The following morning the same pigeon – or one very like it, at any rate – is sitting on the window ledge at home.

Clearly the bird has heard some good Co Durham accents, decided it’s had enough of wannabee peas, packed its bags and headed north. It’s Carlin Sunday: time to get some proper bird food down its neck.

PITSEA’S 36 minutes from Fenchurch Street, next stop after Basildon. First impressions aren’t great, though there’s an ancient church tower on a hill. The ancient church was demolished years ago; the tower remains so that it can prop up a mast for Orange.

Everywhere there are flyovers, everywhere Tesco. Outside the sprawling supermarket a pillar bears the single word “Hello.” Even the bingo hall’s boarded up.

We head for a pub called The Winged Horse, where a notice advises that shirts must be worn in the bar, though they can go bare chested on the patio.

Pitsea has also had a recent murder, a body found in a burned out car. Police are said to be studying CCTV footage filmed at 2 15am of a hooded youth on a bicycle trying car doors. By some accfounts it could apply to half the population.

There’s been a change of plan, though. On Friday morning the referee has looked at the Bowers and Pitsea pitch and thought it unplayable. The game’s moved eight miles to Concord Rangers, who play on Canvey Island.

It delights a chap up the street from here – “Canvey Island’s where Dr Feelgood are from,” he says, excitedly – but disappoints David Bauckham, who wrote a book about football dugouts and had himself planned a Pitsea stop.

“If you’re into static caravan parks and oil refineries then Canvey Island is for you. Otherwise it’s a dump,” he emails.

Pitsea, he adds, is all right.

ends

In more optimistic days they sent me on a course to Hove, or somewhere. Among other imagined high flyers was Drew Smith, chief sub-editor of the Basildon Evening Echo and the closest I’d hitherto come to the place. Drew insisted on a first night tour of the town in search of jellied eels, horrible things. He went on to become the esteemed editor of the Good Food Guide, I to be inordinately fond of carlins.

CANVEY ISLAND is no longer really an island at all, though perilously close to sea level. The Great North Sea flood of 1953 killed 58 people, mostly sleeping in seaside bungalows as the water reached the ceiling. Thirteen thousand had to be evacuated.

Bowers and Pitsea are of the Essex Senior League – that of FC Romania and Sporting Bengal, of Tower Hamlets and of Greenhouse Sports – and even have a fan club. “Benefits include a signed letter from the chairman,” it says.

Morpeth Town are of the Ebac Northern League, that of Shildon.

Concord Rangers, known as the Beach Boys, play in the National League South. The ground’s OK, the dugouts nondescript.

The programme notes that Morpeth has the sharpest main line railway curve in Britain and that Pitsea is “slightly run down.”

The Essex Senior League has only ever had four FA Vase semi-finalists; the Northern League has been to Wembley for the past seven seasons, returning six times with the trophy. Morpeth, bottom of the second division just five years ago, aim to make it eight and take an early lead through Sean Taylor’s wonderful 30-yard lob.

Michael Chilton makes it 2-0 after half an hour. That Mr Brand and my younger son believe it to be the opening goal is because Gary had been an awfully long time in the clubhouse and the bairn has (allegedly) gone in to see if he were all right.

“I took my sandwiches,” says Gary.

The crowd’s about 700, the Morpeth contingent accompanied by a large and doleful air horn which sounds like an elderly she-elephant in the final stages of a particularly painful labour. The afternoon’s still a bit misty – you can hardly see the oil refineries at all.

In the second half B&P pile back. After 90 minutes it’s 2-2 with all to play for in the second leg on Saturday and a looming dilemma for Bowers and Pitsea manager Rob Small. The final’s at Wembley on May 22; his wedding’s the following day, in Cyprus.

“Realistically, I don’t think I’ll be at Wembley,” he says and Morpeth Town will very much hope that he’s right.

Via the sharpest curve in the system, the Railroad heads north once again this weekend.