Red Rover

 

QT8 is a very strange name for a metro station.  You don't get many stations that are abbreviations.  You instinctively want to run it together to form words: cutie-eight.  And now I'm thinking of when John Gardner introduced an assistant to Major Boothroyd in his Bond novels and nicknamed her Q'ute.  Those early Gardner novels were weird.  They uncomfortably straddled Ian Fleming seriousness with Roger Moore insanity - I'll just say one breasted woman eaten by giant snakes.  If you know, you know.

QT8 actually stands for Quartiere Triennale Ottava.  It was a district constructed as part of the eighth Milanese Triennial, an art and architecture festival that has run every three years (on and off) for a century.  The idea, lead by a planner named Pierre Bottoni, was to build an "ideal" district - a showcase development of the future.  They drew ideas from all over the world, particularly the English Garden City movement, and built a district on the edge of the city that was full of greenery, with smaller blocks of apartments and a break from the rigid street plans found elsewhere in Milan.  The buildings were also prefabs, to accommodate the post-war need for homes.

I came out of the station behind a gaggle of excitable Sri Lankans lugging cricket equipment.  I personally thought one of the advantages of moving to Continental Europe would be never having to deal with cricket, the world's most boring sport.  It's like moving to London and still playing American Football; you don't have to do that now, you can play a proper sport that isn't eight parts ridiculous.  Cricket takes entire weeks and no sport should ever last that long.  This is why the Olympics is so great; the entire Games last a fortnight and there are a million different events you can flick between to satiate your limited attention span.  I guess you can drink a keg of beer at a cricket ground and nobody minds, but these gentlemen seemed to have only athletic equipment.

I'd left the station outside the Church of Santa Maria Nascente, an unusual circular building.  I was hoping to hear the strains of a Latin Mass floating outside but there was nothing.  Being in Italy on a Sunday morning had filled me with aspirations of seeing parades of black clad widows headed to church but there was nothing of the sort; like many cities Milan is deeply secular these days.  

The greenery around the wide avenues was welcome.  I'd gone only one stop from Lotto but it felt like an entirely different city.  There's a man-made hill here, Monte Stella, constructed out of the rubble left over from the war (Milan is weirdly flat, with very few even mild hillocks, and there's not a massive river in the centre either; it makes you wonder why people set up a city here in the first place).  Monte Stella is the green heart of QT8, with the homes circling it and its slopes given to all kinds of leisure activities - this was no doubt where my cricketing companions were headed.

I paused to refill my water bottle at one of the free water fountains that are scattered throughout the city.  The spigots are shaped like a fish, and have a neat little trick; if you block the flow with your thumb, it shoots out a hole in the top of the head, making it easier to drink from directly.  These fountains would be literal life savers over the next few days, popping up on street corners and in piazzas to allow me to rehydrate and wipe away some of the sweat.  And once again - this is free for everyone.  

I was sauntering now, strolling under the canopies, enjoying the morning.  Joggers went by, somehow looking more refreshed than me even though they'd been actually running.  A school named after Martin Luther King appeared to my right, I Have A Dream painted across its front, while a random fence post had been topped by a tin of Tennents Lager, an unexpected bit of Scottish litter in the middle of Lombardy.

I crossed a hefty road junction and found my way towards Lampugnano station.  It was constructed as a park and ride, with a hefty multi-storey attached, and at its base is a bus station which is home to FlixBus and a lot of other long-distance coach services.  (Where the hell did FlixBus come from, by the way?  I swear I'd never heard of them a decade ago and now not a single contestant on Race Across The World can go anywhere on the continent with it being on a bright green single decker).  

The net result of this is that ATM don't really expect anyone to walk up to Lampugnano; they're all interchanging between various means of transport.  It meant I was dodging moving vehicles and crossing bus lanes to try and reach the station.

When I got there though, I had a surprise: a station building!  Every stop so far had been a hole in the ground - this was the first time the Metro had an actual street presence.  I dashed over, avoiding the homeless man asleep on the bench and the various people idling about - possibly for a bus, possibly for more nefarious reasons - and took my photo.

The presence of an above-ground ticket hall didn't induce a sudden rush of architectural magnificence, however.  It was a concrete box with a little bit of natural light.

It reminded me of some of the stations towards the end of the Green Line on Stockholm's Tunnelbana, the ones built in the fifties to serve brand new estates on the edge of the city.  Lampugnano was opened in 1980, however, so instead of it feeling like an architect embracing a modern construction method to make a statement, it smacked of "this is cheap".

I'm personally not a fan of trains - as I've always said, I like railway stations, not railways - but I know some of you are so here you go: a video of an M1 train arriving.  Please don't ask me what class it is because I have no idea.  (Equally, please don't tell me).

One hop on and I was at the next station: Uruguay, or, as my brain pronounces it thanks to Homer Simpson, U R Gay.  Which would make standing under it and taking a picture kind of a burn if I wasn't, you know, gay as a window.  

I rose up into a wide stretch of parkland between two roads, surrounded by apartment blocks and well-used.  Children yelped in the playgrounds.  People much fitter than me played sports.  

By a bus layby was a water house, a supersized version of the water pump I'd used earlier that dispensed still and sparkling water.  Two old ladies were stood beside it with shopping bags packed with empty bottles, filling each one in turn; I silently disapproved, but apparently part of the purpose of the water house is to reduce people using plastic bottles so I guess they were being eco friendly.  It still felt a little like they were taking the piss.

The blunt bulk of the Bonola shopping centre loomed up ahead of me, and I followed its flank in search of a way in.  I was out of luck.  There didn't seem to be a pedestrian entrance at all.  Eventually I gave up and walked through the car park underneath to a sloped travelator.

I wasn't here to shop.  I was here to have a few moments of blessed air conditioning.  I thought that, perhaps, I might have a coffee and a small snack, if I could find somewhere suitably middle-market for me.  I wanted a corporate chain of some sort, somewhere I could be anonymous and hide away and not have to be confronted by waiters or tipping or speaking too much English to bewildered Italians.  I wanted an Italian Greggs, basically, where I could buy something pastry and slip away.  I was out of luck, however, as everywhere seemed far too classy for me, far too "eatery".

I'm not saying that the Bonola was an exclusive mall, by any means; quite the opposite in fact.  I just mean that what it had was still overwhelming to me.  I am chronically afflicted with shyness, with awkwardness and anxiety, with a fear of doing or saying the wrong thing.  I don't have the confidence to pull up a chair and get waited on, to order a single coffee and a croissant, to casually cast down a few coins to clear my bill and wander off.  I need the regimented world of customer-shopkeeper, an exchange of goods for money, then I can go.  I was soon headed to the exit, back down to road level, without so much as a Coke passing my lips.

Incidentally, on entering the mall I was confronted by a large sign telling me that photography was strictly prohibited inside, so please enjoy all three pictures I took inside, to stick it to The Man.  Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the lady who came up the opposite walkway moments later who was wearing a Fido Dido t-shirt and made me think I had somehow slipped into a wormhole back to 1991.

Bonola station was located through a couple of underpasses decorated with graffiti and gentlemen of the road.  It gave me another above ground building, and I want you to cast my mind back to where I complained about how dull Lampugnano was.  How I thought it could do better.  Well, Bonola was trying for something.

I didn't expect that something to be bright blue paint all over it.  I'm not sure about the mindset here.  I mean, it's not attractive, so we can rule that out immediately.  It's not tied to the corporate appearance of the line, because, as we've seen, the M1 is a bold red.  I could only think that the blue was some kind of special anti-spraypaint coating to put off the local "artists".  Perhaps it was more of a psychological barrier, with nobody locally wanting to post their tag on such a hideous background.

Inside they'd made a valiant effort at a bit of a feature with circular rooflights.  Unfortunately, ATM had missed that you need to keep those features clean and well-maintained, otherwise you're drawing people's eyes to a mess.

That's not a skylight, it's an angry sun about to go nova.

Long-time readers (hello you!) will know of my fondness for a station clock.  The Milan Metro has an example in most of its ticket halls, and it's a good one: sturdy, clear, and always showing the correct time.

I was at San Leonardo, which was the terminus of this branch of the M1 between 1980 and 1986.  Its station building has not been blighted with blue paint.  

In fact, that was the first surface building that looked like it was in a good place.

The sun was baking down now, burning at the streets and hapless English bloggers who didn't really take in how going to Italy in a July heatwave would fundamentally alter their body chemistry.  Everything about me was wet and clammy.  Everything was moist.  

Still, I did finally get to see my devoted Italian parishioners, as the church that gives the station its name had reached chucking out time (I don't think that's the correct theological term).  Groups of elderly people made their way slowly out of the front door and dispersed to the surrounding homes.  I don't think there was anyone under the age of fifty, which doesn't bode well for the future of the Catholic church.

Molino Dorino - the next station, and not, as you may think from that name, an adorable mouse in a children's cartoon - was built as a single station extension in 1986.  It was hard not to imagine the Milanese authorities didn't so much plan metro extensions, more come up with them on the fly when they realised they had some money left over.  "Turns out we got more council tax than usual this year, fellas - shall we build a bit of underground railway?"

The real reason for the extension was to get another park and ride on the map.  Molino Dorino is nestled in the corner of a major road junction and has been gifted with a car park that looks like a modern fortress, turrets and towers overlooking the roundabout as you approach.  There's another bus exchange here, and the metro station building is... oh dear.

It just doesn't work.  It's horrible!  Leave it bare, for goodness' sake.  Anything to distract from this sky blue abomination.

It's a lot better on the inside, though it suffers from an overabundance of empty shops.  I can see why they'd have built it with a mini-mall inside, what with all those bus customers too, but now it looks sad.  ATM have recently signed a deal to regenerate their commercial spaces, handing them over to a private company to try and get some life into them.  It's a shame they couldn't do it themselves but it's not hard to see what needs to be done.  People don't buy newspapers any more, they don't smoke, they bring a bottle of water from home; the on-the-go facilities that would've traditionally filled the mezzanines are all dying off.

Pero station brought something truly shocking.  At the track level, every station on the M1 looks more or less the same.  A central tunnel - usually with pillars dividing the two directions - and platforms on either side.  It's so standard I've had problems differentiating between the pictures I've taken, having to zoom in to the name to make sure I don't stick a Gambara in the Wagner section by mistake.

Pero gave me an island platform.

Perhaps heat stroke was setting in but I found this far too thrilling.  It's not a true island - the escalators and stairs are all in walled off sections behind it, leaving only passageways to access the southbound tube - but still, the variation was welcome.

Above ground Pero had another pleasing sight - a small head house for the escalators and stairs.  This shift in architectural style is probably due to it being constructed in 2005, long after the rest of the line (it's the newest station on the M1, for the time being).  Putting the entrance in a dedicated building at the centre of a small piazza feels like a far more 21st century way of building a Metro station.

I was now forced to go back down underground for another train, something I hate doing unless it's really necessary.  Unfortunately the final station on this branch wasn't constructed for people to walk to at all.

Rho Fieramilano serves the huge exhibition centres of the same name, a complex surrounded (like the NEC in the UK) with motorways and industry.  Milan is extremely keen on its exhibition centres; I've never known anything like it.  They've hosted the World Expo twice (in 1906 and 2015) and both the red and green lines terminate at complexes of boxes for exhibitions.  Fieramilano, meanwhile, is the modern replacement for a centre in the city itself, bits of which are still in use.  

I've never been to a trade exhibition in my life so I'm not really sure what they involve, but surely they're not that frequent and busy?  There are twenty pavilions at Fieramilano so clearly they're getting a lot of use.  I began to think about all the industries that must turn up there to look at booths covered in inventions, clusters of dental hygienists and plasterers and psychotherapists all gathering in breakout groups to hear the newest innovations.  

It also made me think about Expos.  The Wikipedia page for "World's Fairs" shows that, after the Brits invented them with the Great Exhibition, we hosted one more in 1862 then decided we couldn't be bothered any more.  It's strange that the UK has absolutely no appetite for hosting this multinational event ever again - as far as I'm aware we don't even bid for it.  You'd have thought somewhere like Manchester or Glasgow would be all over that to bolster their credentials as an international city. 

I went through the glass topped ticket hall - which, in the July heat, was like a greenhouse; it's lucky Italy isn't a country that gets hot very often, eh readers? - and emerged above ground.  I'd not gone to the exhibition centres themselves but had instead looked for a pedestrian entrance, the one that is theoretically for people not attending a convention.

I may as well have been on the surface of the moon.  Long expanses of concrete with footpaths nobody used.  Bridges carried conventioneers around on air conditioned, traffic free routes, while us peasants hunkered by their little staircase into the underworld.  

I'd gone from an idealistic version of city life to its dystopian cousin.  It could only get better after this.

Red Route

The Milan Metro has five lines named, understandably, the M1, M2, M3, M4 and M5.  I decided to tackle them in order, because of course I did, so early on a Sunday morning I boarded an M1 train to its southwestern terminus: Bisceglie.  

That's the terminus for the time being.  Milan has the habit of extending its metro in dribs and drabs, a couple of stations here, three more there, and as we'll see these extensions don't always go to plan. Earlier this year a three kilometre extension to Olmi was approved from Bisceglie, with new stations there and at Parri and Baggio.  

I walked up the steps to the exit behind three excitable teenage boys lugging large, oddly shaped bags.  One of them had his on a trolley, which made me think they might be golfers, but up top all became clear.  Bisceglie has a bus terminus built above it and there was a coach waiting for the boys and their mates.  It seemed they were members of a youth orchestra of some sort, and the bus station was swarming with kids clutching their instruments.  It was all pleasingly wholesome: a load of enthusiastic youths off on a Sunday morning to bash their way through Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.  

I let the boys get ahead a respectable distance then hovered on the steps to take the sign pic.

They don't get any better just because I'm abroad, folks.  And yes, I'm wearing a hat.  The July sun in Milan was absolutely merciless and when you're blessed with a Tefal Head like me, certain protection needs to be taken.  I do appreciate that it gives me a vague air of "background drinker in the Rovers circa 1976" but I am far too old to wear a baseball cap and if I wore a straw trilby I would almost certainly get beaten up.  And with good cause.

I walked along the wide avenue towards my next station with a broad grin on my face.  This is where I can be at my happiest: indulging my strange little hobby in a new city, knowing I had dozens of underground stations ahead of me.  This is the dream for me.  I could do this forever, working my way from metro to metro, then going back to the start to see what's changed.

Half-eight on a Sunday morning isn't exactly the time to experience Milan's vibrant personality but that was fine with me.  I was happy strolling down a wide boulevard, shaded by trees in the courtyards of neat apartment blocks, watching cars and trucks roll towards the city.

All too soon, I'd reached my second station.  The Milan Metro isn't big on surface buildings.  The majority of its stops are reached via staircases at the side of the road going down to a ticket hall built below the surface.  

There was a wait of a few minutes for the next train and I watched one arrive at the opposite platform.  As you'd expect for the Continent, Italian trains drive on the right; this fact absolutely refused to log in my brain and I'd spend the next few days being surprised when a train appeared in the tunnel behind me.  I may not be the cleverest person around.

Primaticcio was the next stop, constructed underneath a road junction with exits at each branch.  As you'd expect, I immediately walked out of the wrong exit, and had to cross the road to get to where I actually wanted to be.

I slid onto a back street here, one cooler and more shaded, where the apartment blocks hugged the pavement and hosted small businesses at their base.  A gay couple emerged from one of them, carrying light bags that looked like a picnic in waiting, and took off in their small car with a rev of the engine.

There was a curious building on one corner; a little bit of internet searching claims it's a synagogue, but there was no signage saying so.  Unless this is sadly how Jewish people have to be in 2026, concealing where they worship.

A woman with a tiny dog passed, getting its walk in before the day turned roasting, and I advanced on the station at Bande Nere.  Is it just me or does that sound like the hero of a Spaghetti Western?  "Quake with fear, banditos, for Bande Nere is here!"  And then his horse would rise up on its back legs and a load of dodgy ethnic stereotypes would scatter.  

I will say that the positioning of the station signs is a bit of a problem.  You only get the name of the station on the staircase going underground, which meant every time I stopped for a sign selfie, I had to pause halfway down and whip out the camera.  Fine when it's a quiet suburban stop, not so great when I got to the busy inner city.  There were a multitude of strange looks caught in the background as the days wore on.

Bloody hell I look awful.  The hat makes me look even more of a dweeb than usual.

At platform level, Bande Nere was much the same as the previous three stations.  Milan's station architecture is not awe-inspiring and unique.  The lines were built with value in mind, so the design elements are pretty uniform; two side platforms, columns between the tracks, cladding on the walls.  You get there via a staircase and, sometimes, an escalator, though that more often than not is up only.  There are exceptions - and they were extremely welcome when they came - but each line's format is repeated endlessly along their lengths.

Case in point: at Gambara the cladding stopped being lime green and became this pink and grey speckle.  Gambara was the terminus of this branch, opening in 1966; the stations as far as Inganni then opened in 1975, with Bisceglie opening in 1990.  The change of the cladding is the only hint that there was any gap between the openings, like rings on a tree telling you its age.

The mezzanine areas were built to house commercial properties, and some of them still house one or two - usually a newsagent-cum-snack shop-cum-tobacconist-cum-ticket office.  Most of the retail space is a bit sad, however, the windows covered with ATM logos and up for rent.

Let's see if I can manage a half-decent selfie?

Nope.

The Piazza Gambara lead me onto a diagonal route to my next station.  I was taken with a grand looking building on one side of the road which I assumed was a museum of some sort; it actually turned out to be a historic nursing home for the elderly, the Pio Albergo Trivulzio.  It's existed for centuries as an alms house, providing care for the poor, and the painter Angelo Morbelli did a great number of artworks of the interiors and the people within.  Apparently he was fascinated by the place; these days you'd get called a pervert if you turned up at the door of a nursing home and asked to study the residents.  

More apartment blocks, six or seven stories high, a variety of styles and eras but all with balconies and outdoor spaces.  I kept looking up at the terraces, hoping to see a louche Italian enjoying one of those tiny coffees, but it was still too early.  It's a skill how they manage to have a single shot of pure caffeine served in a thimble and yet it still takes them half an hour to drink it; if they were in a Starbucks an employee would push them out with a broom to clear the table for someone drinking something heftier.

At De Angeli, the street cleaners were out with their trash bags and grabbers, picking up litter from the flowerbeds.  The fact that there was a group of them, all in hi-viz, makes me think they may actually have been doing community service, but it was still nice to see.

Appropriately at De Angeli a heavenly light shone down and obscured the sign.

Wagner, my next station, is the last on the Bisceglie branch.  I'd already completed one spur of the M1 and it had taken less than an hour.  At this rate I'd have done all five lines by Wednesday and I'd be able to go out to Lake Como and relax with George and Amal Clooney for the rest of the week.

Instead of continuing towards Pagano station and the city centre proper, I decided to cut across to the other branch at Buonarroti.  The two stations are barely 300 metres apart, at either end of a straight road; you can't deny that the Milan Metro gives you convenience.

It was gone nine am now, and the city was beginning to wake up.  Restaurateurs were raising shutters and turning over chairs on outdoor seating.  Doors were being propped open to allow a breeze in.  There weren't many actual customers, not yet, but you could feel the life slowly seeping into the piazzas and pavements.  

The Buonarotti of the station name is Michelangelo Buonarotti, better known to us English speakers as the Michelangelo, of David and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fame.  There's something quite sweet about Milan insisting on his formal name for the piazza, like he's being scolded by his mum.  The statue at its centre, however, isn't of Michelangelo at all, but is instead of Giuseppe Verdi.  He looks very casual, hands behind his back and jacket pulled away.

The Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, which the statue looks at, was founded as another retirement centre for musicians and opera singers by Verdi himself.  His tomb is inside and it continues to give a home for divas in their declining years.  I wouldn't fancy giving those ladies a substandard lunch, I'll say that much; even in their 90s I bet they can throw a grade A hissy fit.  

From Buonarroti to Amendola, and a surprise.  The station originally opened as Fiera, because of its proximity to Milan's Exhibition Centres, and so it was built to accommodate crowds.  The ticket hall was put under a plaza and given a large multicoloured roof.

Ok, it could do with a bit of a clean, but it was incredible how much the daylight lifted the ambience of the space.  With black walls and black rubber floors, the stations on the M1 can seem particularly dark, with only the red of the line theme as a contrast.

There's also a large statue in the square by the station, called Ragno agonizzante, which translates as "Spider in Agony".  And yes, it does look a bit like a dead spider, one of those desiccated ones you find curled under the sofa when you move it to hoover.  Why you'd want to have a piece of artwork representing this in your city is another matter.

I walked along the Via Monte Rosa, a mix of brand new office buildings and older apartments.  Graffiti for a gang of football "ultras" - rebranded hooligans - carried the number 1312, which I have learned is code for ACAB.  There was a branch of Popeyes, which irritated me; I accept that British people have terrible taste in food and will accept any American nonsense that gets pushed our way, but you think the Europeans have a bit more class. 

Further up there were some soldiers by the side of the road, prepping for the day ahead.  I'd already spotted a gaggle of them outside Milan Central when I arrived the day before.  It seemed that they were being deployed at crowded parts of the city, presumably to reassure us that if a terrorist were to attack, he'd be swiftly shot by one of the nation's soldiers.  I'll admit I hadn't even considered that I might be murdered by a lunatic until the presence of the army raised the idea.

Now I don't want to disparage the soldiers of the Italian army and their no-doubt fine history of bravery and combat.  I'm not going to peddle tired stereotypes about them being lazy and perhaps less disciplined than their contemporaries elsewhere.  I'm sure they've been in many conflicts over the years, and I'm sure they've won some of them.  I will, however, note that these soldiers in particular had gathered round a fan to cool themselves,  and I'm not sure you'd get away with that sort of behaviour if you was a British soldier in, say, Afghanistan.  It didn't exactly scream "fearsome killing machines".

Piazza Lorenzo Lotto is a square that has existed at the centre of Milan's leisure activities for decades.  The fiera was close by, the city's racecourse abutted it, and on its northern edge was something I really wanted to see: Milan's Lido.

Opened in 1931, it still houses the largest swimming pool in the city, along with other sports facilities.  I love a lido.  Every town should have one, especially if you can put a lid on it in winter for ice skating.  Swimming is so much more pleasurable when it's under a blue sky, and with global warming, you don't even have to heat the water.  A rare upside to the death of the planet!

The Lido di Milano is, however, in a bit of a parlous state.  It closed for refurbishment in 2019 and since then work has been fitful.  It begins, it stops, it begins again; the completion date has slipped from 2023 to, possibly, the end of this year, though nobody seems very hopeful it will actually happen.  In fairness, it is a large job, with additional facilities being added to turn it into more of a multi-use sports facility, but that still doesn't explain the hikes in costs and the sheer length of time being taken.

I skirted the edge of the piazza, heading back to the metro station entrance.  This was made more complicated by the roads being churned up as the city installed a dedicated trolleybus lane through the centre of the square and down the middle of the adjoining roads.  Eventually I made it to the entrance on Via Monte Rosa, having done an entire 360 degree circuit.

As with Amendola, Lotto was built for the crowds, and below ground it was expansive.  On a quiet Sunday it all seemed over the top.

Lotto also gave us our first interchange on the M1, to the M5 line.  The original three metro lines meet in the heart of the city, but the twenty-first century additions skirt it to the north and south, providing bypasses and alternative places to change.  

I was going to continue with the rest of the Rho branch, but I think both you and I need a rest at this point before this turns into a slightly more boring War and Peace.  Come back another time for more pointless perambulation.  I can't promise you it'll be interesting, but it will at least be thorough.

Ciao Bella!

For the past few years I've been lucky enough to travel to a large European city to visit all the stations on their metro.  It started with Amsterdam, then there was Stockholm, and last year it was Helsinki.  

This year, I planned on it being Hamburg.  I started reading about it, bought a book, and then I thought: isn't Hamburg a variation on Amsterdam/Stockholm/Helsinki?  Another large Northern European port?  Aren't you repeating yourself?

I cast my net across the continent a little wider.  For monetary reasons, it had to be somewhere not too far - my dreams of visiting Baku's Metro were sadly put to one side.  It had to be big enough to get my interest - out went Thessaloniki - but small enough to collect in a week - that ruled out Barcelona.  I'd really rather not get killed while visiting it too, so sadly that was the end of Kyiv or Moscow.  It'd also help if it wasn't in the middle of a major extension, too, so I wouldn't feel like I'd missed out on something, so Lisbon will have to wait for another year.

I finally came to a decision.  I was going to... Milan.

First opened in 1964, the Milan Metro has 125 stations spread over five lines, the newest of which opened only last year.  Actually the official map above is a little busy because it includes the S lines, suburban rail routes that pass through the city in a tunnel.  Wikipedia has a much clearer version with only the metro stations on it.

That's manageable, I thought.  I broke out the Excel spreadsheet and worked it out.  It was more than manageable.  It looked like fun.

So there was the task: one week, five lines, travel around the network and hopefully don't get burnt to a crisp by the roasting Italian sun.  It was exhausting, sweaty work, but I'm happy to tell you I did it.  In fact I'll tell you exactly how in a series of long and tedious blog posts over the next few weeks.  Sorry about that.