lord of the rings the book ? - is there any idea where tolkan was writing about for specific areas ?

Its Tolkien

Mediterranean - translate from latin and you get - Middle Earth... hmmm...

However, you mentioned shires... the idea of shires was started by the Anglo-Saxons and was therefore possibly a Germanic idea or even Scandinavian. If you watch the films you kind of get a Scandinavian feel. I don't know why though, because they're filmed in New Zealand. Anyways, whether Tolkien thought about any of this is another matter and he was almost certainly not planning where his stories were going to be shot in the future...

In Birmingham we have the Tolkien trail. The two towers were apparently inspired by the water tower at Edgbaston. Not far from Rednal where he spent a lot of his childhood, there is a farm called Bag End farm in Redditch. The inhabitants of that area are very hobbit like, with pointy ears and hairy feet and smoke to much weed.

Middle earth has no specific location however thinking upon this the other day it is very similar in terrain to Europe in the wooded central area, the mountains to the north (Scandinavia) the plains to the east (Russia) and Africa to the south, although there is no Mediterranean sea

You need a map of middle earth to see this as the lord of the rings takes place exclusively in the terrain similar to Europe and the other areas are only briefly mentioned in reference to some of the other characters

I've heard that Tolkien was from Yorkshire and therefore the shires may possibly be based on Yorkshire??

there is quite a lot of names similar and i have heard it is based on where i live in staffordshire like the shire and tolkien did visit here

He fought on the Western front in Belgium in WW1. This may have inspired his many, many, many battle scenes. I was down in France and Belgium a couple of weeks ago and it was very moving and interesting, well worth a visit if you get the opportunity.

Tolkien made up an entire world for those books. No one can be sure exactly where he wanted them to be.

i suggest you actually read it! In the Intro tolkein said he wasn't writing about anywhere specific

It was land created completely of his imagination.