Holidays, annual leave, vacation. Whatever you call it, it’s supposed to be that few days of the year when you down tools and spend some leisure time away from the day job, eat ice-cream, visit museums, and laze around on a hot sandy beach somewhere exotic.

 

However, for some of us, there is no such thing as being ‘off duty’ no matter where we are…Most people come back from their holidays with photos of themselves doing something enjoyable and having lots of fun. Photos of their menu choice in the local restaurant, standing in front of a statue of a local hero, on the beach sleeping, as well as the statutory pictures of the sunburn marks…. But not me… My rather random holiday snaps always need a lot of explanation to my confused friends.  

 

I spend a lot of my holiday time in France in a small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Luckily we’re located between the Mediterranean coast and the principality of Andorra so at certain times of the year it’s Skiing in the morning and beach in the afternoon. Although in reality, as I don’t ski, it’s more a case of ‘let’s go watch the skiers and run around in the snow throwing snowballs’.

 

As you can imagine, the Pyrenees see a lot of snow every year, and the view on a clear day from the lower hills to the higher snow-capped peaks of the mountain range is pretty spectacular. As you would expect, a lot of snow also equates to a lot of water come the annual snow melt. This is why, as you get closer to the Andorran border you will, as I did, find a hydro-electric power station nestled between the mountains.  

 

Cue  “Oooh, ooh! A hydro electric power station!” from me as we drive past it. Immediately followed, in time honoured tradition, with the words “You’re such a Geek…” as I try to take a ‘drive-by’ snap with my phone camera:




 

The Geek Factor doesn’t get any lower when driving into Pas de la Casa (the border town in Andorra) where, as well as the beautiful scenery and excellent photo opportunities of action sports that I could be taking instead, you’ll also come across a Communications mast: 




 

Or in fact on a trip out to the coast where you’ll find miles of beautiful beaches and where you’ll see a sea (pun intended) of Wind Turbines. Due to the local geological features (a valley sandwiched between two high ridges) it’s a really good, and windy, spot for them!

I would add my photo here but I can’t seem to find it at the moment. However, I’ll update this post when I do but in the meantime here’s a photo I took of the reservoir control tower in Lac de Matemale close to the ski resort of Les Angles: 




 

And when we saw a rather beautiful Tesla Model S in the car park of the local Intermarche… well…. it was Geek overload… 

 

 





...as well as when I spotted a dedicated parking space for electric cars at IKEA in Toulouse:




 

There are lots of rather random technology and engineering related photos that adorn the photo gallery of my smartphone, so much so that a previous colleague and myself used to have a regular competition to see which of us had taken the most random picture that month.

 

I’m interested to see if I’m alone in this obsession, so in that vein… let’s have a competition! 

 

Upload your best and most random Engineering related holiday photo into your photo content area by clicking through My Home – My Content – My Photos and then the Add Photo button. Make sure you tick the ‘share in gallery’ box when you’ve uploaded your photo and tag it with the following word: engineerpics, in the tag field. Don’t forget to add a short description to tell us what it is and why you took the photo as well!

 

All contributions will be collated here: Engineers Holiday Pics so please take a look at the entries and rate, like or comment on eachothers photos. Please also note that your photo may take up to 15 minutes to index and be visible in the search results so if it's not there immediately please check back later!.

 

I’ll be giving away some small prizes for some of my favourites… 

 

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