Nick Miners Photography

I’ve been to loads of places in 2010, as reg­u­lar fol­low­ers of this blog will be aware. Here, for those who are new, and any­one else who might be inter­ested, is a selec­tion of shots from each of the coun­tries, cit­ies and counties I’ve been lucky enough to visit.

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.

Earlier in the month, pretty much on a whim, I booked a return train to Paris for my fam­ily and me so we spent most of yes­ter­day in this fam­ous European cap­ital. We star­ted (as we almost always do) in Mont­martre, which while very touristy, has some very col­our­ful shops to pho­to­graph and an unbeat­able view of the city from in front of the Basil­ique du Sacré Coeur. Des­pite this, I enjoy vis­it­ing the area less and less each time, as there are an increas­ing num­ber of hawkers, blaggers and out­right con artists, all try­ing to take advant­age of the gull­ible tour­ist, and it’s a real effort just to avoid mak­ing eye con­tact or enga­ging in a con­ver­sa­tion with one of them.

After get­ting our fill of the pan­or­ama, we headed south to the Centre Georges Pomp­idou, a gal­lery and mod­ern art museum. Designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano in a style remin­is­cent of London’s Lloyd’s Build­ing, the build­ing has most of the infra­struc­ture and struc­tural sup­port on the out­side, leav­ing the interior free of clut­ter and with ample room for the inter­est­ing stuff. A set of escal­at­ors take you up inside a glass pipe which runs out­side the front of the build­ing, all the way to the view­ing gal­lery at the top, where the Eif­fel Tower can be seen to the west, and while one of the two gal­ler­ies is cur­rently closed, there is a very good exhib­i­tion of the work of Pierre Soulages.

Before leav­ing we vis­ited another fam­ous Parisian cathed­ral, Notre Dame de Paris, which stands on a island in the middle of the river Seine, and I cre­ated some abstracts using the vari­ous col­oured lights of shops, cars and traffic sig­nals. Then with sore feet and tired eyes, we headed back to Gare du Nord to catch our train back to St Pan­cras Inter­na­tional and head home.