And tours of a top UK football ground include a surprise encounter with the Queen.

A new website, www.sportcloseup.co.uk, details more than 30 sports museums charting the history of football, cricket, rugby union, rugby league, tennis, golf, racing, motor racing, motorcycling, speedway, badminton, cycling, fencing, rowing and shooting – from museums with global appeal, like those at Manchester United and tennis at Wimbledon, to small personal collections open only by appointment.

It lists 50 stadiums, racecourses, stables, studs and motor racing circuits and works that can be toured, as well as the London 2012 Olympic Park.

And there is coverage of places that played a big part in the development of sport, like the town that gave its name to one and the village often described as the cradle of cricket.

The website, founded by John Evans, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's former spokesman on London 2012, provides reviews, essential facts for visitors, icons indicating facilities, news, maps, links and photographs, with travel and weather information.

An accompanying Twitter feed and a newsletter offer an easy way to stay in touch with the latest on sporting visitor attractions.

The unusual museum and tour exhibits are: the grave of three-times winner Red Rum, a feature of the Grand National Experience tour at Aintree; the "ghosts" of Sir Alex Ferguson and John McEnroe, permanently in residence at the museums at Manchester United and Wimbledon, thanks to the 'Pepper's Ghost' illusion; the dead sparrow, killed by a delivery from Jehangir Khan in a match at Lord's in 1936, a fixture at the MCC Museum; two World War Twoamphibious "schwimmwagens" used by the Wehrmacht, on show at the Donington Grand Prix Collection at the motor racing circuit near Derby; the pistol used by Fred Archer, 13-times champion jockey in the late 19th Century, to take his own life, an exhibit at the National Horseracing Museum at Newmarket; and portraits of the Queen, on the wall of the Rangers home dressing room, included in the tour of Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow.

"This is going to be an extraordinary decade of sport in the UK, with the Olympics, Paralympics, Commonwealth Games and World Cups coming to the country where so many of the world's top sports were invented, had their first rules written down, or were popularised," said Evans.

"The sportcloseup website, for the first time online or in print, lists all the visitor attractions that celebrate sport, provides impartial reviews and helps fans of sport and our history to plan visits.

"It will tap into - and cater for - unprecedented interest in Britain's role in creating sport as we know it today and the stadiums where it is played in the 21st Century."