The Internet is great… for lots of things. But one thing it doesn’t do well is lingering over big things. That’s why, although you can see almost any piece of art you may wish to see within a few seconds by tapping its name into Google image search, galleries are still full of people looking at the very same objects. And they always will. Whatever imagery software may develop in the years to come, I would lay money on the fact you will still have to queue up to see the 2020 exhibition of Monet at the Royal Academy. And that is why I am a little frustrated when trying to put the detail into my itinerary as I don’t have a map of the whole thing in sufficient detail to linger over. I can’t instantaneously compare the distance from Reading to London (which I know very well) with the distance from Como to Milan (which I don’t). Until now that is…

I have just cannibalised an AA map of Western Europe (with a bizarre scale of 1:1,706,000) so that I have an overview map of the whole journey from Reading to Brindisi which also has sufficient detail to allow me to pinpoint places to stay in between the places identified by the Eurovelo 5 description. Some portions of my journey were on the reverse side of the map so some cunning cutting and sticking was required.  It cost me £4.99 and it does feel like sacrilege to take scissors to a map (a bit like burning books, or rather just singing them as I suppose I’m still using the map, or some of it) but well worth the crime. Cartographers the World over will be tutting if they read this….

Sorry Mr Turner; your framed poster has been relegated to the floor so that my new composite map has a home until the end of August.