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PERSPECTIVE
The best photographic accessory
You need to get to where the pictures are. And a bicycle is a great way of doing that.
There are many forms of photography — landscape, urban, street, nature — that require you to seek out your subjects. And that requires mobility.
But a car is often too fast, too cumbersome (you have to find somewhere to put it) and too isolating. You are moving past the environment rather than through it and are restricted to where the roads take you.
And feet are too slow, especially when carrying heavy camera gear.
A bicycle is the perfect compromise. You can cover more ground than you would on foot and go places a car can’t reach. And you are moving slow enough to stop and respond instantly when a subject or scene takes your fancy.
With panniers and a rack, you can carry as much gear as you like, within reason. Certainly more than would be comfortable, even in a good backpack.
Perhaps most important is that you are still very much present in the environment. You experience it directly. You see things you wouldn’t notice in a car and wouldn’t have the time or energy to reach on foot.
There’s another benefit of cycling, too (apart from exercise). It leads you to places you didn’t know existed.
The green way
Taking up cycling some years ago introduced my wife and I to something of which we were only vaguely aware. Greenways. These well-maintained cycle and walking tracks are common in many parts of the world. However, in France, where cycling is something of a religion, we seem particularly well blessed with voies vertes.
We’re lucky to live in a part of Normandy where two major cycle routes converge.
La Vélo Francette opened in 2015 and stretches 600km from the Normandy port town of Ouistreham, just north of Caen, down to La Rochelle in the Charente Maritime. It spans seven départements and three regions.
