In June 2026, I cycled 350 miles across England and Wales to recreate the journey taken by "Number Six", the protagonist of the classic 1960's spy-fi series "The Prisoner". Along the way, I made a short film in the style of the show's iconic opening titles, which you can see for yourself here.
I’d wanted to visit "The Village" ever since I first watched The Prisoner, so when I found myself thinking about my next cycle tour earlier this year, Portmeirion was an obvious destination. When I had the further thought of beginning the trip at Six's underground spy headquarters in Westminster, the plan was set.
Plotting the route wasn't too difficult: I knew I wanted to sightsee along the way, so I added stops in Oxford, Warwick, Birmingham and Shrewsbury. This took me close to the famous Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in Wales, and from there I followed the Dee valley to Rhyl, continuing along the north coast of Wales the rest of the way. Cycle.travel did a good job at linking these sections together, putting me on canal paths, country lanes and cycle routes for most of the journey. In all, there were only a few miles of unpleasantly busy roads on the whole trip.
The biggest complication turned out to be the weather. After a few sunny days, the heavens opened while I was cycling along one of Birmingham’s canals. The next two days had more bad weather forecast, and it took frequent use of the Met Office weather radar to avoid getting caught out in a thunderstorm. The last thing I wanted was for the trip to end with me getting struck by lighting on top of a Welsh mountain.
As well as being my most ambitious cycle journey to date, this trip also served as an interesting filmmaking project. Before the trip I bought a secondhand GoPro and a HoverAir drone from eBay, and made sure I got some practice using them. Once on the road, I constantly looked for opportunities to shoot interesting POV and "ride-by" footage. This added hours to each day of cycling, but I found this extra creative element really engaging. In London, I enlisted a friend’s help to shoot an almost exact remake of the beginning part of The Prisoner's iconic opening titles, to really sell the homage I was going for.
At the end of the week, I had collected over 3 hours of footage, which had to be brutally filtered and edited down to get to the 3 minute montage I had in mind. I had to leave some really great shots on the cutting room floor, but I’m very pleased with how the final film turned out. I’ll definitely be thinking about filmmaking ideas when it comes to planning my next trip.
Watch "Return to the Village" on YouTube
