Remember the ‘lockdown project’? It seemed that most people had one; tiling the bathroom, writing an anthology of poetry, organising a series of parties that you would later deny were actually parties to the UK parliament (and even if they were, you had nothing to do with them…). That kind of thing. My lockdown project was to make an audio documentary about the life and times of Maximilian J. St. George. (I’ll post the link below.) Well, Easter has just finished and I had an ‘Easter Project’ (you heard it here first)…
My brother and his wife are currently in Australia, visiting their daughter and her family. They hadn’t been able to visit since before COVID but there was a ‘problem’; their cats… Two beautiful black cats. And they need feeding every day. Step forward, or rather ‘cycle forward’ yours truly who, over the course of the Easter period, has been cycling the 13km round-trip to feed the cats every morning. Having just invested in a GoPro Hero 10 (see previous post) and keen to dip my toe into the potentially disastrous area of using a drone to film yourself whist out cycling, what better opportunity than to make a short film about my daily trip to feed the cats? The video, that you will be able to watch as from 7pm on Tuesday 19th April 2022, offered me the possibility of focussing upon a different type of filming over the course of around 5 days; iPhone hand held, GoPro ‘time lapse’, GoPro clamped to the handlebars, GoPro clamped elsewhere on the bike and, of course, the DJI Mini 2 drone.
Without further ado… Lights? Camera? [Surely cameras, no?] Action!
If you fancy something more cerebral (with no catsโฆ) here’s that audio documentary about the life and times of Maximilian J. St. George. The man who put the ‘cycling’ and the ‘Europe’ into ‘Cycling Europe’ way before I ever came along…
“This episode of the podcast is going to be slightly different. Rather than talking to a current cyclist, Iโm going to be investigating the life of a cyclist from the past. Youโve probably never heard his name before and youโre even less likely to have heard his story. He was a German-born American called Maximilian J. St. George. His story is told via extracts from his book, Traveling Light or Cycling Europe on Fifty Cents a Day read by the actor Jeremy Walker with contributions from the historian Dr James Stout, the cycling writer Michael Hutchinson and two Romanian long-distance cyclists Lehel Benedek and Elod Keresszegi. Itโs an epic take of an epic cycling journey from over 100 years ago by the original Mr. Cycling Europeโฆ”
There was even a follow-up episode a year later:
“In June 2020, The Cycling Europe Podcast dedicated the whole of episode 21 to the epic early 20th Century European cycle of the American Maximilian J. St. George. After discovering the podcast, Tim & George, both grandsons of Max got in touch, as did Juniper, great grandson of Maxโs travelling companion Varnum Parish. Varnum not only rode with Max for several months but wrote his own diary. The podcast talks to Tim, George and Juniper about their ancestorsโ travels in Europe. Plus: Simon Garland takes a comical look back on his EuroVelo 15 cycle along the route of The Rhineโฆ”
Visit the dedicated Baltic Sea Cycle Route / EuroVelo 10 page of CyingEurope.org to discover more about the planned cycle around Europeโs other big sea.
Since 2009, CyclingEurope.org has established itself as a valued, FREE cycle touring resource. There’s now even a podcast, The Cycling Europe Podcast. If you enjoy the website and the podcast, please consider supporting the work of CyclingEurope.org with a donation. More information can be found here. Thanks if you do!
Catch up with The Cycling Europe Podcast:
