Le Grand Tour: The View From On High

By Andrew on September 18, 2022 • ( Leave a comment )

It’s now two weeks since I arrived back in the UK after the summer’s jaunt around Europe with Wanda (the bike…). It’s been an interesting couple of weeks to say the least. On a personal level, I finally feel as though I’ve caught up with things. It was a rather sudden turnaround from being long-distance cyclist to secondary school teacher – about 18 hours to be precise – but after two weekends I’m finally in a position to say everything is ‘sorted’. Well, apart from that cupboard crammed full of my camping equipment but at least I can’t see it unless I make the effort to open the door.

Amongst other things, this weekend has seen me download all the 300GB of video that I managed to create during the two months away. It will be put to good purpose over the coming weeks and months as I prepare to deliver a talk at the upcoming Cycle Touring Festival in Clitheroe in October (tickets are still available I understand) and, later in the year, to my local branch of Cycling UK / CTC in Halifax. I also plan to make a film about ‘Le Grand Tour’ but bearing in mind it will be pieced together from the 2,500 iPhone, drone and GoPro videos, it might take some time. However… one of the small frustrations in producing the daily videos during the trip itself (visit the Cycling Europe YouTube channel to watch all 60+ videos) was that I could only access relatively low-resolution video from the drone. Now back at home, the 4K versions of the videos are available so I was eager to see how they looked. Below is a short film that tells a visual story of the trip from the air from the perspective of the drone. It’s not the full story – you’ll have to wait for the book for that! – but it’s a pretty – occasionally pretty spectacular – glimpse from 100 metres above the earth. Enjoy!

P.S. Don’t forget to catch up on the podcasts that I produced whilst travelling – all 8 of them! The links are below…

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