Returning to a place that you used to call home can produce a strange emotion that seems to somehow straddle sadness and joy at the same time.

The Marshes in London offer a peaceful escape for the mind. Huge green spaces are flanked by winding paths that follow the curving canals on each side.

This local’s guide to Barcelona introduces you to the Barcelona that locals call home, rather than the more obvious tourist sites. I hope it inspires you when planning your next trip to Barcelona.

Barcelona in winter is quirky and brilliant, and offers a much more realistic view of the city than the one you get in the summer months. You’ll love it.

Now, when I’m not there, I miss the light of Barcelona too. If you live in the city, you get used to waking up to an apricot glow, squeezing through the shutters and slowly creeping up the walls of the flat.

The more the world shrinks and everywhere begins to look the same, the more I think we should celebrate quirky, local customs. And Barcelona has plenty of those.

There might come a point where you want to escape the tourists in Barcelona. And if that’s the case, these places will happily offer you a bit of a refuge.

Walking around the ruins of Pompeii, the volcano, Vesuvius, is a constant presence. You see it beyond the crumbled columns. Then it appears through an old doorway.

If you take the C-16 road north from Barcelona towards the Pyrenees, you’ll eventually hit the French border. And then, a few minutes over the border into France, is Spain. Again. Welcome to Llivia.

In the exam hall before the papers were handed out, all I could hear was the beat at the start of the song. Dum dum, dum dum, dum dum…