Drone Masterclass in the French Pyrenees, May 2018

After about an hour’s drive from Toulouse Airport we arrived at Giles & Louise Neville’s gites. The location is truly superb with views across miles of open countryside to the Pyrenees in the “middle distance”. As the light changes through the day, so the atmosphere changes, making every view different!

Giles and Louise (and their dog “Daco”) make everybody really welcome and the accommodation is exceptionally clean, comfortable, spacious and full of character.

The first afternoon was spent flying from the gites’ garden getting a feel for everybody’s level of ability and ensuring that we all understood a few basic rules of safety and separation. Everybody enjoyed flying in new surroundings and we very quickly established a great “Group Dynamic” with a bit of good natured banter and lots of exchange of wisdom.

Louise takes great pleasure in creating a wide variety of meals for us and Giles is a very good host, so it was no surprise that our first evening meal extended over a thoroughly pleasant couple of hours followed by a relaxing hour or so with a couple of beers before bed.

There followed 4 days where we adopted the format of the morning in one location, lunch and then another location…

Everything from the biggest road through a natural cave/tunnel in Europe to ruined castles on top of spectacular rocky outcrops, waterfalls crashing down mountainsides, tranquil lakes in serene surroundings, a medieval bridge in a hidden gorge and barns high enough in the mountains to be above the early morning clouds… A veritable plethora of truly photogenic opportunities, and all with plenty of alternative viewpoints and enough space to permit 2 drones to fly safely at the same time!

After the first day’s activity we established something of a routine where we could all gather to admire and critique each other’s video and stills on a large screen TV before dinner. I certainly felt that we all benefited from seeing different ways of viewing the same subject!

And it was very interesting to get Giles’ take on what we had produced since he is a very competent photographer in his own right and he has copious experience of guiding many residential land-based Photography Holidays that he accommodates in Manzac.

I think that it’s fair to say that everybody enjoyed our week there and we all left wanting more!