ITV Britain’s Favourite 100 Walks
Play filmFrom Yorkshire to every corner of Britain
Working with a super-experienced ITV production crew based in Manchester, and assembled at short notice, our Yorkshire drone team travelled the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, from our own doorstep in West Yorkshire to the South Coast, the Lake District and the Scottish Highlands.
Drone filming with our DJI Inspire 2 aircraft for this shoot involved plenty of walking and culminated in an epic hike up Helvellyn for the final episode.
Julia Bradbury and the ITV team were a joy to work for and we look forward to many more future expeditions.
This two-and-a-half-hour epic TV programme is repeated every Boxing Day and is a testament to all the hard work that went into the making of it.
Brontë Country: Haworth, West Yorkshire
Closer to home, the series brought us to Haworth, near Keighley in West Yorkshire, the hilltop village that was home to the Brontë sisters and one of the best-loved walking destinations in Yorkshire.
Haworth sits above the Worth Valley, where the steam trains of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway still run through the Yorkshire countryside, and on the edge of the wild Pennine moorland that inspired Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
The ruined farmhouse of Top Withens, high on Haworth Moor above the village, is the location most often linked with the setting of Wuthering Heights, and the walk out to it across the moor is one of the great Yorkshire walks.
Our drone filming here took place on Yorkshire Water land, flying over the open moorland and footpaths that make this corner of West Yorkshire so special.
As a Yorkshire drone company based just over the hills in Calderdale, Brontë Country is right on our doorstep. It was a real pleasure to show Haworth, Keighley and the Worth Valley from the air to a national ITV audience.
100 Walks the Extra Bits
Every one of the many filming locations was condensed into a three-minute short film. This left lots of our amazing drone footage unseen, so we put together this short film of some of the extra best bits.
Which we knew you’d enjoy.
Play filmCarrying a cinema drone up Helvellyn
Being the drone pilot on ITV’s Britain’s Favourite 100 Walks had some major challenges, as we were required to travel around the country filming stunning drone GVs with presenter Julia Bradbury.
We walked in hot temperatures on the beaches of the South Coast, flying out to sea, and in the freezing cold of Glen Coe in Scotland, up and down the mountains. The final and winning ITV walk was up Helvellyn in the Lake District and involved trekking with our drone to the summit, starting at dawn and returning back down the mountain late into the evening.
A fairly moderate walk up some serious inclines, but being equipped with a big drone like the DJI Inspire 2 made it ten times more difficult. This was a fairly last-minute location, as ITV were not sure which walks the public would choose, so when the call came in that we were to climb Helvellyn the crew and kit were quickly put together and we set off from Yorkshire for the Lakes.
If our booking for drone filming came in this week we would use the DJI Mavic 3 Cine; however, this was before the Mavic series. There was no time to buy a custom-made rucksack, which we now have, to carry the kit, so a regular rucksack strapped to the DJI hard case was the only option. See our still images for the evidence.
There was no way we could take such an expensive and large drone up the mountain without any protection from the Cumbrian weather.
ITV booked a one-man operation, so the second remote control was removed from the case to reduce weight. We took just one prime 12mm lens and the X5S camera up the mountain. We were asked to drone film in 1080 H264 in Rec 709 (Normal) colour space to keep the editing time and costs down for ITV.
As well as the aircraft, camera and one drone pilot remote control, we managed to get seven pairs of batteries into the case: 14 individual batteries. The weight was around 25kg in total, so lugging it up to the top of Helvellyn in a makeshift rucksack took its toll.
The mountain also took its toll on our poor cameraman Jamie Knights, who battled his way to the top with his very large Amira camera, prime lenses and the heaviest tripod on the planet.
Our sound engineer forgot his socks and also ended up in a bit of a state with shocking blisters.
A true adventure
Our amazing ITV director Nick Small, who often acts as one of our drone camera operators, is also a super-fit fell runner. He often took over carrying our ridiculous drone rucksack to help get the kit to the summit and capture some of the most amazing drone footage we have ever filmed.
This was a true adventure, stopping every few hundred metres to film a piece to camera with Julia and interviews with the public, then flying our drone to capture more drone footage.
Being the drone pilot on this particular shoot was such a privilege, as the photos on this page clearly show. We set off in misty conditions and reached the top of Helvellyn just as the sun went down, producing the most spectacular sunset, not often seen in the Lake District.
An absolute privilege.
Coming back off Helvellyn was a lot faster; however, we were ill-equipped, with just head torches and the lights on our mobile phones.
Carrying the drone down the mountain was a lot easier; however, we did have one more casualty. Fabio, Julia Bradbury’s make-up artist, took a tumble and sprained his ankle, but did live to tell the tale.
How technology has moved on
It’s amazing how technology has moved forward. At the time of writing we are preparing to head back to the Lake District and up Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England.
This is for a BBC walking film and, in contrast to ITV’s Britain’s Favourite 100 Walks, in just the space of a medium-sized rucksack we can now carry a DJI Mavic Mini 3, a Mavic Pro 2, our Mavic 3 Cine, countless batteries and screens, all coming in at a weight of around 8kg. A far cry from one drone and our 25kg load heading up Helvellyn a few years ago.
Behind the scenes on Britain’s Favourite 100 Walks
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