Nick Miners Photography

I have just returned from a fant­astic road trip across France to the Span­ish city of Bar­celona. Our route took us from Cal­ais in the extreme north of France, through Clermont-​​Ferrand in the Mas­sif Cent­ral, an elev­ated sec­tion of France where the autoroute reaches alti­tudes of over 1200m above sea level. Fur­ther south the autoroute crosses the Via­duc de Mil­lau, one of the tallest bridges in the world, which spans (and rivals as a spec­tacle) the Gorges du Tarn near Mil­lau in the Aveyron départe­ment. After leav­ing the Mas­sif Cent­ral, we drove through the Medi­ter­ranean south coast along­side Mont­pel­lier and Per­pig­nan, before cross­ing the bor­der with Spain to the east of the Pyrenees.

Five nights in Bar­celona were barely enough to see what this amaz­ing city and its sur­round­ing area has to offer, but we man­aged to see some of the Catalan archi­tect Ant­oni Gaudi’s most fam­ous work, includ­ing the Parc Güell, and the simply breath­tak­ing Temple Expi­atori de la Sagrada Familia (Church of the Holy Fam­ily), which, nearly 100 years after Gaudi’s death, is still under con­struc­tion to this day. To the north of the city, the mon­as­tery of Mon­ser­rat lies 1,000m above the sur­round­ing coun­tryside on one of Spain’s most beloved mountains.

Our route back took us through the Pyren­ees to the medi­eval French for­ti­fied city of Car­casonne, and back to the Via­duc de Mil­lau where we approached from beneath, rather than cross­ing it, to get a dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive. As we approached Clermont-​​Ferrand for a second time, the skies over the Mas­sif Cent­ral gave us a rather impress­ive send-​​off with one of the most stun­ning sun­sets I have ever seen.

Tags: Auvergne, Barcelona, Calais, Carcasonne, Clermont-Ferrand, Europe, France, Gaudi, Massif Central, Montserrat, Parc Güell, Sagrada Familia, Spain, volcano