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This is the latest in my series of posts about the London Edinburgh London audax event in August 2025. Read part 1 here (my road to LEL), part 2 here (lessons from the 400k London Wales London audax), part 3 here (even harder lessons from the Bryan Chapman Memorial 600k audax), part 4 here (volunteers put together the LEL rider starter packs), part 5 here (packing tips for LEL riders) and part 6 (Surviving Storm Floris on LEL 2025) here.

I enjoyed making my video about riding Britain’s greatest long-distance cycling event, London Edinburgh London 2025. As I have blogged, the organisers rightly cut the ride short because of Storm Floris, and volunteers and riders alike showed tremendous spirit in the face of adversity. Here’s the video:

GoPro or Insta360 camera?

I love making videos of my cycling adventures, and knew I had to do the same for LEL. But how? My go-to camera is a GoPro Hero 13 Black. The latest GoPro devices are very reliable, and I can click to record in an instant with the camera mounted on my handlebars. The resulting footage is incredibly smooth – a contrast to my first action camera in 2013. Another advantage is that I can remove the device in an instant thanks to the magnetic mount, and take it with me, either to keep it safe, or to take video off the bike.

I toyed with the idea of taking my Insta360 X5 on the ride, as it gives so much more flexibility. One clip gives you so many different angles, as I found on the Bryan Chapman Memorial audax in June, and as you can see here:

I thought this could capture some great video of London Edinburgh London, such as a stunning landscape vista and an image of a rider racing past me in one shot. That flexibility is so attractive compared with swivelling the GoPro to get a side view. Audio quality is excellent too, and the low light options better than even the latest GoPro. (GoPro really needs to up its game here.)

But this flexibility is also a disadvantage. It takes me far longer to process each Insta360 clip – deciding which segment of the 360 degree shot to use, edit it as needed, and export it to my video editing app along with all the other clips. I’m sure I’d be quicker with practice, but I feared it would take an enormous amount of time to create a YouTube highlights video from hundreds of Insta360 clips. So … I took the GoPro to LEL. I did see one person using an Insta360 camera on LEL, and would be interested to see the resulting video.

Image from drone video by Fergus Coyle

You can get great views from an action or 360 camera, but aerial shots really make a video stand out, and I wanted to take a drone with me on LEL for this reason. I thought a light drone would be perfect, but saw sense after a moment’s reflection. I was carrying too much stuff already, and wouldn’t have time to set up and fly a drone if I were to have any chance of getting to Edinburgh and back within 128 hours.

As it turned out, Storm Floris would have grounded any drone, so I made the right decision. Happily, Fergus Coyle kindly let me use some of his lovely drone shots of the start in my video. But I still yearn to fly a drone on the stunning Scottish sections of LEL, as seen in the official video created by Darrell Whittle. Perhaps I’ll get the chance if there is an unofficial group ride next year over the LEL northern and Scottish loop that most riders missed because of Floris. (There’s been a lot of chatter about this in the LEL Facebook group.)

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy Darrell’s video below.