u/spoonlamp

I can't recommend this enough - the ability we have to jump on a bike, zip off and have some personal down time and still be in work in the morning is worth its weight in gold! One night, one bag, one steak, one beer!

30-odd degrees C in London - needed to get that airflow going!

Breakfast was ok, could have done without the insects, then the pub was closed when I needed a cold drink - turns out all I needed was the Bonnie and the road!

I toured 9 days from London to Scotland around the NC500 and back on a Triumph Bonneville, camping every night. I share my packing mistakes and lessons learned, and why carrying a full moto camping cooking setup was a total waste of space thanks to amazing Scottish food.

With the NC500 behind me and Rory's Harley Davidson in front of me, we leave Glencoe and head East before turning south towards Glasgow. Some delicious food keeps us focused until Rory leaves me all alone on the boring motorway headed to Orcaber Campsite (if it's not busy, they won't do pizza!!) in the Yorkshire Dales for one last night of camping before home.
Any recommendations for a nice tank bag for a T120 Bonneville??

The seventh day of my journey riding from London, around the Scottish North Coast 500 and back, camping all the way.

Today we leave Applecross and take the Long Way Round before cutting across Scotland and into Inverness across the Kessock Bridge, closing my first NC500 loop. We push on, riding down the shores of Loch Ness and stop to pay our respects at the Commando Memorial at Spean Bridge, before finishing the day off with pizza in Glencoe.

The seventh day of my journey riding from London, around the Scottish North Coast 500 and back, camping all the way. Today we leave Applecross and take the Long Way Round before cutting across Scotland and into Inverness across the Kessock Bridge, closing my first NC500 loop. We push on, riding down the shores of Loch Ness and stop to pay our respects at the Commando Memorial at Spean Bridge, before finishing the day off with pizza in Glencoe.

I leave the huge beaches of Sands campsite in Gairloch on my Triumph Bonneville and ride south through the gorgeous highland scenery to try and beat the bad weather to the infamous Bealach na Ba pass, leading to Applecross. Hoping to meet my friend Rory on the way, but he has much further to come - will he beat the weather and make it up the pass on his Harley Davidson?
The Bealach na Ba used to be the route cattle would be driven between the villages of Tornapress and Applecross in Wester Ross. The pass itself is a single lane road, 11 miles long, and in the middle its hairpin bends climb from sea level to over 630 metres within 6km, creating gradients around 20%, and has the steepest ascent of the roads in the whole of the UK.

1,658 miles on a Triumph Bonneville, around the country in 9 days of riding, camping every night. From London, round the NC500 and back again, this was day 5. The riding through the Scottish highlands was stunning and some of the most fun riding I've ever done. The two campsites I used on this day (waking up at Scourie and finishing at Sands) are both incredible and get a huge recommend.

I wanted to share what I've started using as a guideline for editing and posting my clips. I'm fairly new to treating my channel like a proper creators channel rather than just sharing videos with family so made an effort to follow a process. Let me know what I'm missing or throw in some details for me! Based on motovlogging and camping trips so far, roughly 8 - 13 minutes ballpark so far;

1. File management - Go through all usable captured footage, rename to order by number and dump it into a project folder. Dump that into DaVinci Resolve. Do a quick scrub through and delete stuff that is either boring or already covered in another clip.

2. "Big Handfuls edits" - cut down longer clips so the whole timeline is more condensed.

3. Colour, crop, straighten, zoom

4. Start working on narration (I don't have a decent mic setup yet to capture live, will sort)

5. Consider scores

6. Tighter edit, bringing down that run time, distilling the better footage, match edits to beat of the score where appropriate

(Here I'll massage 4/5/6 together as I go)

7. Create thumbnail, "endcard" moment, look forward, "call to action"

8. Export

9. Upload to Private

10. Check details - description, title, thumbnail, links, copyright, tags, end-card links

11. Set release time - same time every week

12. Engage with all comments within first couple of hours, try for all within first couple of days/week.

13. Review results, be critical, adjust, try and improve.

An addendum is that I have fairly crappy old video equipment for this which I'm in the process of replacing, so I guess that falls into "improve"!