From the 13th until the 16th of July 2023, I cycled trough the V86 French cycling path, which follows the valley around the Lot River, tributary of the Garonne. It flows from the Aveyron to the Lot-et-Garonne departments of France, passing by the “Lot” one, mostly in the Northern Occitanie region.
We started in Capdenac, where we cycled for a bit until finding a good wild camping spot at around 10 Km away from the city. Next day, we woke up early and cycled until Cahors, slightly over 80 Km. We passed by the Pont De La Madeleine, where I took some great photos and amazing drone shots, capturing the early morning light and the misty fog above the river water. We kept advancing until Larroque-Toirac, where there is a great castle rising at the edge of the mountain, where I could take another great drone shot surrounding one of its towers. The next picturesque attraction we encountered was the Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens church, in Crégols. After many beautiful viewpoints, we arrived to one of the highlights of the trip, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, a medieval town raising in a hill next to the river listed as one of the most beautiful villages of France. We then kept cycling until reaching Cahors.
The next day, we visited some of Cahors’ landmarks, such as the Saint-Etienne Cathedral or the Valentré Bridge. Our plan was to keep following the path until Villeneuve-sur-Lot (another ~80 Km) before leaving the river and going to Agen (30 more Km), so that we could connect this trip to the one we already did from Toulouse to Bordeaux following the “Canal des 2 Mers” path. However, on the outskirts of Cahors, two big cycling paths cross, and we started following the wrong signs for more than 30 Km. Since it would be too much to come back to the initial plan, we decided to deviate and go until Moissac, eat in one of our favourite restaurants in Occitanie and take the next train back to Toulouse, finishing our trip early. In our way, we crossed many huge fields of beautiful bloomed sunflowers.
Chapters:
00:00 Misty Pont De La Madeleine
00:30 Larroque-Toirac Castle
00:52 Road and Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens Church
01:08 Road and Views
01:50 Saint-Cirq-Lapopie
02:00 Cycling
02:20 Cahors
02:50 Sunflower fields and Moissac
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I recorded the video with a Pocophone X3 Pro smartphone and a DJI Mavic Mini foldable drone. I editted it with DaVinci Resolve 18, I used some audio effects from Freesound and I used Canva to do the thumbnail. I used the YouTube Audio Library for the background music and, for the first time, I experimenting adding letter boxes to try to enhance the cinematic feeling of some of the clips (I cropped 120 pixels from the top and the bottom, so an approximate 2.3:1 aspect ratio, instead of the more standard 1.85:1 or 2.4:1 because I preferred it). I also did some vertical positioning corrections to the framing to account for these crops, mostly trying to give more air on the top of the landscapes. I decided to leave some parts of the video in 16:9 to give them a less serious feeling.
Music from the YouTube Audio Library:
Bone Dry (Telecasted)
Stealth (Aakash Gandhi)