The BeerTrain

Not a pure Crank trip this time, more something I managed to persuade the wife she really wanted to do on the way back from a Holiday in Italy! We'd rented an apartment overlooking Lake Como in Menaggio, a very well to do resort town. View from our Menaggio Apartment View of Menaggio taken from the Lake View of the Lake taken from Menaggio As usual with these types of places pretty poor for me in respect of Brewpubs and interesting beers, apart from a good shop that did sell rarities from small breweries in the local area. This meant if we weren't in town of an evening for a meal then I was more than happy to sit on our balcony & sample some of these! We hired a car for the week, good fun down some of the Lakes VERY narrow roads some of which were single track with blind bends in the middle! I drove past George Clooney's house several times but he never popped out to wave, he's been known to have a few beers in Menaggio oft times but he was a no-show this week! I wo...

A single manned trip to Sardinia to try to cover the branches to Iglesias, Carbonia Stato & the main line to Macomer with D445 diesels. The E656 website was used to glean info on which services should be hauled. Then due to all flights back to the UK coming into the extortion category, over to the mainland for a day in the Sienna / Florence area. (# as usual denotes required locos) Wednesday 27/08/08 Left Barnsley on the 0627 then change at Sheffield, Leicester & Luton finally arriving at Luton Airport Parkway 0953. The First bus to the airport is free on Priv passes but wasn't gripped anyway. Flew right time with Easyjet at 1125, arrived 10 mins early at Cagliari. As I only had a small rucksack as hand luggage I made the shuttle bus (2 euro) although none of my fellow travelers did. There is a bus ticket machine in the arrivals hall but I had no change, the bar refused to give me any change,but the bus driver wrote me out a ticket no probs. (While festering for my flight ...