Alan Heath

Some ideas I would like to share with other enthusiasts of outdoor life and camper vans. You can see some of the places I have visited in other videos!

This is the beginning of my longest camper van journey to date - from Catania in Sicily to Tomaszów Lubelski in eastern Poland! In fact the journey is even longer but parts of it are not included. The journey started in Brucoli, Sicily and will finish in Ternopil, Ukraine - and then I will return to Poland and possibly go to the UK.

I will be stopping at various places en route to see what is interesting there as well as to visit friends. I think this could be even longer than the series I did six years ago called Europe 2007. Europe 2013 could end up being 6,000km - and it is far more exciting by being in my camper van!

In total, the Moscow Metro has 292.2 km (181.6 mi) of route length, 12 lines and 177 stations; on a normal weekday it carries over 7 million passengers. Passenger traffic is considerably lower on weekends bringing the average daily passenger traffic during the year to 7.0 million passengers per day. The Moscow Metro is a state-owned enterprise.

The system operates according to an enhanced spoke-hub distribution paradigm, with most rail lines running between central Moscow and its suburbs. The Koltsevaya line forms a circular ring that connects the spokes and facilitates passenger movements between lines without having to travel all the way into the central city.

Each line is identified by an alphanumeric index (usually consisting of just a number), a name, and a colour. The voice announcements refer to lines by name, while in colloquial usage they are mostly referred to by colour, except the Kakhovskaya Line (number 11) which has been assigned shade of green similar to that of the Zamoskvoretskaya Line (number 2), Koltsevaya Line (number 5) and Butovskaya Line (number L1). Most lines run radially through the city, except the Koltsevaya Line (number 5), which is a 20-km-long ring connecting all the radial lines and a few smaller lines outside. On all lines, travellers can determine the direction of the train by the gender of the announcer: on the ring line, a male voice indicates clockwise travel, and a female voice counter-clockwise. On the radial lines, travellers heading toward the centre of Moscow will hear male-voiced announcements, and travellers heading away will hear female-voiced announcements. In addition, there is an abundance of signs showing all the stations that can be reached in a given direction.

The system was built almost entirely underground, although some lines (numbers 1, 2 and 4) cross the Moskva River, while line number 1 also crosses the Yauza River by bridge. Fewer than 10% of the stations are at or above the surface level. The surface sections of the Metro include the western part of Filyovskaya Line continuing as Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line between Kievskaya and Molodyozhnaya (eight surface stations), and the Butovskaya Light Metro Line (L1) with 4 elevated stations. The other surface stations are Vykhino, Izmaylovskaya and Vorobyovy Gory (the latter is unique in the world being built into a lower level of a bridge). There are several short surface stretches, including those between the stations Avtozavodskaya and Kolomenskaya (where a new station Technopark is going to be built), and between Tekstilshchiki and Volgogradsky Prospekt.

The Moscow Metro is open from about 5:30 until 1:00 (the opening time may vary at different stations according to first train schedule, but all stations close for entrance simultaneously at 1:00). During rush hours, trains run roughly every 90 seconds on most lines. At other times during the day, they run about every two to three and a half minutes, and every six to ten minutes late at night. As trains are so frequent, there is no timetable available to passengers.

Get Carter is a cult British crime thriller starring Michael Caine. Alongside the Long Good Friday, it stands out amongst British underworld films. Set in Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1970s, forty years later I sought out the locations where the film was made. I have still five locations to film in the Hamsterley Forest, Blackhall Colliery and Newcastle.