British Architecture and French Engineering

We've travelled about 500 miles in all to the Lozère region, south of the Massif Centrale and the Auvergne, and one of our objectives was to see the Viaduc de Millau. This remarkable construction takes the A75 motorway soaring across the Tarn river 600 feet below.

The bridge was designed by Sir Norman Foster architects and is wonderfully precise and seemingly light structure to carry a four-lane autoroute 1.5 km across the valley. I'd read about this and seen a programme about how it was made but seeing it in real-life was a remarkable experience. The engineering task was lead by a French team and realising such a simple form in such a difficult terrain was a work of some genius.

We even broke a lifetime convention and took a "selfie" ... 8o0