Photo Tour of France
My most ambitious photo adventure to date, my tour of France would take in several locations and several miles of autoroutes.
Setting off from Portsmouth on the overnight ferry, across the Bay of Biscay to Santander, my journey began. On arrival in Spain the following morning, my day-long motorway journey took me through Bilbao and Biaritz to Pau where I would stay the first night - no photography yet, my initial goal was to reach the gite I had booked as my base in the Languedoc region. On the second day, a slightly more leisurely drive took me alongside the foothills of the Pyrenees to La Force, a small village between Castelnaudary and Carcassonne, which would be my base for five days.
Beautiful French countryside in the vicinity gave some fantastic shooting opportunities, but also within easy reach was the Canal-du-Midi which probably gave me the most memorable sunrise shoot of the entire trip. The walled city of Carcassonne, the small village of Saint-Felix-Lauragais and the Poterie-Not and the images I gained from visiting them were superb highlights.
After a number of days in the region, I moved on to the Dordogne and Bergerac for a brief stay, capturing some images here and along the way via Sarlat-le-Canada. The Chateau-Monbazillac was the highlight of Bergerac.
Hitting the road again, my next stop was Fouras, a small town along the coast which gave me a base for the Charente-Maritime region, which includes the beautiful towns of La Rochelle, Rochefort and the ocean defence of Fort Boyard, all locations which had plenty of photo opportunities, resulting in some lovely images.
My final stop took me up to the Brittany coast to stay not far from St. Malo. An afternoon and evening in Mont-Saint-Michel and the following morning’s sunrise at the Mont Dol and Dol-de-Bretagne brought to an end a fantastic photographic adventure before returning home via the St. Malo to Portsmouth fast-cat ferry.
This was my first proper landscape photography adventure covering areas which I would love to revisit, especially the Languedoc region of France.
