2018 photos: Fieldwork (and tourism) in Spain and France

2018.06.20 - Gruissan
Gruissan, a coastal village near Narbonne.

If I’m really going to take my digital life off Facebook, I have to get serious about tending to a more distributed version of that site’s functions. Exhibit A is my Flickr account, which I’ve gotten lax with updating — I was almost a year behind with uploading images there! The holidays have been a good chance to catch up, though, and I’ve finished updating through a trip to Spain and France for fieldwork last June.

I was there to take samples of Medicago truncatula along the Spanish and French Mediterranean coasts — ridiculously pretty territory, even when a snafu with my car rental meant I had to do a fair bit of collecting by mass transit and rental bike. I flew into Madrid (with a layover in London), then to the Spanish coastal town of Málaga; then I spent most of a week in and around Narbonne, France, and finished with a day in Paris before flying home (again via London). It was my first time in both Spain and France, and my first time in Europe in more than a decade.

The whole collection of photos is posted in this album, but here’s a few more highlights.

2018.06.17 - Medicago in the wild
Medicago truncatula, at the first site I’d ever seen it in its natural habitat.
2018.06.17 - above Marbella
The hills above Marbella, Spain.
2018.06.20 - canal path
The canal path from Narbonne to Gruissan, which took me right to some prime collecting sites.
2018.06.25 - Basilique du Sacre Coeur de Montmatre
The basilica of Sacre Coeur, in Paris, just uphill from my hotel.