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.

Dock Tales

 

You might come to this blog for many reasons.  The trains.  The photos.  My witty repartee.  If you come here to admire the scenic beauty of England, then I'm afraid this post is not for you.  Outside Birkenhead North station is a vast hinterland of abandoned docks and industrial units.  This is the back streets, the abandoned parts, the leftovers of Britain.  And here I was walking through it.

For once, I was in familiar territory.  This bit of the Wirral is familiar to me because it's the location of the Bidston Recycling Centre, the peninsula's number one spot for getting rid of rubbish, and as the owner of an awful lot of rubbish, I've been here a fair few times.  Many's the afternoon I've trudged back and forth with arms full of wood or broken tiles or, on one particularly sad day, boxes of VHS video tapes that nobody else wanted.  

It lends a certain piquant aroma to the surrounding area, particularly on a hot day in June, and there's no real way to disguise it.  Still, it could be worse; for many decades, the tip was simply the Bidston Dock, and rubbish was poured into it without any consideration to separating your paper from your food waste.  The pile has now been grassed over to form a hillock and nature reserve - one that has carefully placed stink pipes scattered around to let out the methane.  

Crossing a bridge that wasn't really necessary any more, I reached a building site.  Piles of rubble and metal were being shifted from side to side.  This will soon be a David Lloyd Health Club, boasting the largest padel facility on the Wirral, indoor sports courts and a cafe.  It'll also boast an open air swimming pool, with the CGI images showing sun loungers scattered around the edge like a Benidorm getaway.  Remember a few sentences back when I was talking about the smell coming from the tip?  Yeah.

I managed to get over the busy dual carriageway - one gentleman stopped his car and waved me across, which was good of him.  The flowers here are a tribute to PC Dave Phillips, who was killed here by a car thief as he tried to deploy a stinger in 2015.   I went up the steep hill, towards the district of Poulton, past a working men's club and a church with an open door inviting you into their cafe.

For decades there was another railway station in a cutting here: Liscard and Poulton.  Opened in 1895, it was the only interim stop on a branch line to the ferry terminal at Seacombe, and as such had an important role getting Liverpool commuters across the river.  It was never incredibly successful, however, and when the rest of the Wirral Railway was electrified in 1938, the branch was left powered by steam.  That decision hung a noose over the branch which wasn't finally tightened until 1960, when the whole route was closed and the tracks lifted.

The deep cutting was instead repurposed into a far more twentieth century route - the approach road for the brand new tunnel under the Mersey, the Kingsway.  Nothing remains of the station as a result.  There would've been an island platform where the central reservation is now, and the booking hall has been replaced with an electrical substation.  If you squint you can just about see the slope on the right hand side of the road that was where access was, but you have to use your imagination.

The only indication that there was ever a railway here is in the street running alongside, which is still called Station Road.

I crossed back over Mill Lane and followed a bendy avenue that paralleled the tunnel approach.  A woman in a pink tracksuit unplugged her electric car from the public charger built into a lamppost; across the way, a group stood on the doorstep of a house, laughing and gossiping.  A small side road had the unusual name of Paula's Way - I've not been able to find out exactly who Paula was - and then there was a wide road with stores that seemed to have escaped from another era.  The credit union was alongside a sewing store and a supplier of fruit machines; even the paper shop still had a sign for the Daily Post, which hasn't been published since 2013.

A footbridge takes you back over the motorway here, and I've always been fascinated by it when I passed underneath because someone has decided to paint it in the Merseytravel colours.  There's absolutely no need for it to be in grey and yellow, but there it is, and I enjoy it.  I walked over, keeping my eyes averted from the speeding vehicles below, instead taking in the many black stickers plugging a men's hairdresser in town.  Their use of the phrase English Barber had a vague dogwhistle to it.

A row of Victorian terraces now descended back towards the dock, with huge storage tanks providing the full stop at the bottom.  Most of the houses had venetian blinds or a thin film stuck to the glass to stop prying eyes, though a couple were old school with net curtains.  On the corner, an abandoned toilet sat alongside the wheely bins, vaguely hoping a kind dustman would cart it off for them.

I turned to the side, where a pub had been converted into a pair of houses, and down a one way road augmented with a chicane of kerbs to slow joyriders.  The pedestrian entrance to a recreation park was crowned with piles of fly tipped rubbish; bits of plywood, black bags, an upside-down pushchair.  I'll remind you that ten paragraphs ago I was talking about a massive recycling centre that would've happily accepted all that, but I guess it's simply too difficult for some people to give a shit.

I was on the Dock Road now, an unlovely stretch of tarmac between yards and garages.  Anonymous business units surrounded by parking sit opposite tyre centres and scaffolding.  Some of that has been swept away for a new grey building, angled in the middle to follow the dock, which will form the new HQ for an MDF manufacturing plant.  It's still unfinished and looks far too clean and pristine amongst the rest of the grimy units.

Round another corner, and I was confronted with the new face of the docks.  It's been nearly twenty years since Wirral Waters was unveiled to the public, an ambitious plan by Peel to fill the land round here with skyscrapers and businesses and turn it into a glistening Dubai on the Mersey.  You'll be unsurprised to learn that literally none of that ambitious plan has actually happened; in fact, Peel's complete lack of activity has been the cause of raised eyebrows, with some accusing them of land banking.  Where the Dock Road meets Duke Street, however, there is an actual sign of progress.

Miller's Quay is a development of six brightly coloured apartment blocks that wouldn't look out of place on a dockside in Frankfurt or Amsterdam.  They're a bright, bold statement of intent, a big show of investment, and even better they've been completely occupied since almost the first moment they opened.  There have been a few teething problems - parking was a problem for a while, with many residents preferring to leave their cars on the street rather than pay the fees, until double yellow lines were laid down - but it's a remarkable success.  They're even getting their own Sainsbury's, a little grey and orange blob now under construction, which is a canary in a coal mine of gentrification.

I wasn't sure whether the public realm around the towers was public after all.  The signage was vague, and in 2026, you kind of expect anywhere nice to be patrolled by stern-faced security men intent on kicking you out.  I walked between two of the buildings boldly, as if I had a right to be there, and found a lovely little promenade on the waterside with plenty of benches and planting.

I'm not one hundred percent certain I was meant to be there, but I had a nice little stroll and nobody leapt out to demand to see my papers.  Next to Miller's Quay, however, there's a large plot of undeveloped land; it was marked for an apartment block for over 55s, but the delivery partner pulled out.  I wouldn't want to be a pensioner round here - as I said, it was only just getting a supermarket, and there are no buses along the Dock Road except for, bafflingly, the N1 night bus when it passes through the new tunnel on the way to Birkenhead Bus Station.  I can't imagine there being many old dears who've much need for a bus at four in the morning.

The footpath has been upgraded along this side of the road to full luxurious dockside living, though on the other, its's still a strip of grey tarmac beside factories.  It was a strange, schizophrenic place, working and living coinciding; I doubted that many of the people on the fourth floor of Miller's Quay finished their cappuccinos on the balcony then wandered over for a shift at the skip hire place across the road.  

The East Float apartments were the first to be redeveloped into residential in the docks and for years they've stood on their own, isolated, the home of pioneers who gambled that they were buying into the new Albert Dock or Canary Wharf.  Beside them are some interesting red modular homes built by Urban Splash; there was meant to be an apartment block behind, but the division that built houses went into liquidation.  Only now is there work going on to build the block, a pile driver relentlessly banging into my thoughts as I passed, although its design is not quite as interesting as the first phase.

I'd walked the whole length of the float now, right down to where a lifting bridge allows ships to pass through from the Mersey.  The docks still see a lot of maritime use, even today; there's frequently a naval ship moored up for restocking or refurbishment.  It's nothing like it used to be of course, and with all the actual freight handled across the river in Liverpool, it's no wonder Peel are scrabbling around for new uses for all that land.

The problem is, they don't really seem to know what to do with it.  As I crossed the bridge, I approached the derelict Central Hydraulic Tower.  It once supplied power to the whole dock complex, and it's designed to resemble the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.  It's a beautiful building that's fallen into disrepair.

The first plan for the tower was that it'd be a bar and restaurant, with a rooftop lantern giving you views across the river to Liverpool.  There would also be a new hotel.  That fell through, and instead it was proposed to be something called a "Maritime Knowledge Hub", linked to the Wirral Met College next door.  That's also fallen through, and in the meantime, the Grade II-listed building is quietly collapsing.

It's really hard to know what Wirral Waters is, or will be.  The feast of glowing glass skyscrapers was never going to happen - everyone knew that - but it doesn't feel like there's any kind of purpose here now.  It's as though Peel will simply allow anyone who turns up to build on their land.  A new factory?  Sure!  Apartment blocks?  Why not?  Down here, on the edge of the docks, there was the college, plus an office development, with a scheme called Egerton Village ("a dockside restaurant and bistro, small independent retail units, artists’ studios, managed workspace and even a central public events space") meant to occupy the space in between.  If you've got the money to build, you can.  It doesn't seem like a place. 

It's a development in search of an identity.  To me, the obvious solution is to fill it with apartments; the one thing this country needs is homes, and a vibrant new waterside village based around the docks couldn't miss.  I stood at the side of the road; behind me was the Liverpool waterfront, while in front of me acres of open water stretched away.  Surely someone could do something with it all.

The grey sky that had been amassing above my head finally broke.  I'd planned on walking back along the Corporation Road to Birkenhead North, closing the loop, but I didn't have a coat and I'd already walked a fair few miles.  Instead I headed to Hamilton Square and bought myself a cup of tea.  

Today actually marks the anniversary of this blog; the very first post was on the 17th June 2007.  Somehow I've managed to push through it for nineteen years, despite the general trend of the internet and increasingly vitriolic calls for me to stop, and I have you, the readers, to thank for that.  Your readership - and generosity - has always been appreciated.  Thank you again.  Here's hoping we'll all still be around for the twentieth.