Australia 2013: The Ghan, Darwin to Adelaide

Another of those places where it felt surreal to walk the pathways of a place I'd seen in everything from Asterix graphic novels as a kid, to movies via many history books. Every footstep, a connection to the past. I visited on a bright but changeable February morning and the queues were still deep. I cannot imagine how busy it must be at the height of summer.

When travelling, there are places you visit not for beauty or culture, but to educate and remind yourself of our capacity for intolerable cruelty to one another - and to reaffirm why it must never be allowed to happen again. Robben Island, home to many political prisoners under the Apartheid government, is one such place.

Some days it just all goes wrong. This was one of them. I'd been working in Chennai on a secondment and was coming to the end of my time there, where I'd have a couple of weeks to myself. This was the first place I visited, and promptly began feeling sick about 10 minutes after arriving. It was a scorching day, and I'd arrived with the sun at it's highest. I dragged myself around the complex for a single lap stopping as many times to throw up as I did to take a photo, before collapsing into the rear seat of the hotel car for the long ride home.

After three solid days of walking the city, I did something I don't usually do and took a ride on one of those hop-on, hop-off tourist buses that tend to be found in the big city.

A Soviet era Nuclear Missile base with four silos buried deep in the woods in a quiet part of Lithuania. Now converted into a museum. Frankly this place left me with a haunted feeling, knowing within half an hour of a call destruction could be sent to one of many targets. Seeing these marked upon maps still on display somehow made it even more real.

A walk around Kew Gardens at night, guided by Christmas Illuminations.

Another of those places that has to be seen with your own eyes. Every nook and cranny is filled with detail that even a gallery of a thousand photographs could not hope to capture. So many moments where you turn a corner and say 'hang on that's a...'

I went to Valencia in for the conclusion of the 2017 MotoGP World Champions, but got a little time the day after the race before my evening flight home. It's a city I'm going to have to return to in order to see more of the city itself. The Museu de les Ciències is where I spent most of my time. As well as being an outstanding museum, it is a photographers paradise. Full of leading lines and abstract angles.

Sometimes you make a mistake, and sometimes that mistake is utterly avoidable. The day before this trip I got the then new iPhone 7 took a couple of shots in nice light and thought, 'this is good'. I'd taken some online comments to heart. Something along the lines of 'only 'cause you've got an expensive camera'. Rather than dismissing it, I thought I'd challenge myself and set off to Amsterdam with only the iPhone. As it turned out, I fell in love with Amsterdam that weekend and wished I'd had my X-T1 with me. The iPhone looked alright in good daylight and on a phone screen, but quality simply fell apart as soon as the light dimmed and seen on a laptop or larger. In December in a city filled with beautiful illuminations the good light fell away quickly and what was left on the sensor did not do the city justice. The next time I went, I did not make the same mistake twice.