A Tale Of Two Cats: Nuremberg and The Great Escape

A Tale Of Two Cats: Nuremberg and The Great Escape

So very good morning from uh Germany I’m on the Auto Barn 3 probably about 30 minutes away from nurburg and uh we’ll be getting there probably around about 2:30 can’t check into my hotel for about 3:00 so I’m just relaxing at a service station having a cup of coffee and just

Chilling out until I head on down to norenburg um I’ve talked a bit about cameras and I’ve talked a bit about the trip so far this uh Journey but I want to talk about the car um it’s a Jaguar um some of you might have seen photos of

It um it’s a story behind it um I came to the UK in 2022 um on some family business and I was only going to stay two or three months and I was going to buy a car always wanted a Jag I was going to buy a

Jag drive around the UK for two or three months shooting some Landscapes shooting some seascapes and also doing some property searching up in the northeast of England so I thought I’ll get a car and then sell it before I go back to Ukraine but obviously uh that didn’t

Happen Ukraine uh was invaded um my wife um I had to go and get her out of Ukraine the Bucharest and um she came to the northeast of England with me well London originally and then the northeast of England and we um we still have the

Jag and um it’s a Jaguar XF sport Break um which is the estate version It’s a beautiful looking car one of the most beautiful Estates I think that’s around on the roads today um it’s a black edition as well so everything’s blacked out the windows you’ve got black uh

20inch rims on it um it just looks like a proper Jag and um and it feels like a proper Jag as well it’s uh yes it’s a diesel and I know that’s the fuel of the devil but um you know it’s still a very

Good diesel It’s a V6 uh 3 l um it does 155 limited obviously and it’ll hit 60 and under 6 seconds and it just pulls like a train um I’ve been able to try out uh you know a reasonable amount of speed on the auto bars um out here in

Germany in the unrestricted parts of the auto BS uh I bottled out at 130 I’m not going to go faster than that and um you know that that was quite quick enough for me um few seconds at 130 then I just backed it off and that was it uh and you

Know cars still going past me Audi and M3s and AMG Merks and all that going past me 155 probably even more some of them um but yeah that’s not for me um despite its uh big engine and power it does pretty well uh economically it’s um

So far been doing about 47 miles to the gallon which I think is quite remarkable really um over the 900 miles that I’ve done that’s with air conditioning on up and down Hills plus you know taking it over a ton a few times on the auto bar

As well which is never particularly good for economy so yeah that’s um that’s pretty impressive um it’s it’s a proper Jag it’s got all the uh the attributes that Jaguar used to State uh in their advertising Grace pace and space um it’s a big car the estate area with the seats

Folded down it’s got like a th000 liter capacity and Tanya and I literally packed our entire life into the back of this car from London when we went up to Newcastle so our it uh it certainly fitted our entire life in here um Grace it’s just an absolute dream on the road

It it whooshes like a Jag should do and yet when you put it into Dynamic mode or into sports mode it becomes a growling Jag you know one of those sort of monsters it’s fast it’s you know accelerates it growls um and if you put Dynamic and sports mode on then well

There I don’t even do that it becomes a fully manual Beast you have to use the shift paddles all the way to the automatic box basically switches off you have to shift paddle everything um but you can really shift this thing in in those combined modes uh and if you’re uh

A person with a bit of a suicidal bent you can also switch off the uh stability control as well and um that’s something I’m probably never going to do to be quite honest anyway uh I’m a few miles outside norenburg I’m going to relax a little bit more and then I’m going to

Head on down into nurenberg and go to my hotel um I’ll catch you later possibly for a shoot tonight we will see weather’s quite Pleasant it’s about 25 Sunshine Etc so we might go and do a little bit of a uh gimbal shoot for video stock tonight and see how that

Goes uh thanks for watching and I’ll catch you a little bit Later So very good morning from nurenberg it’s h quite a pleasant cool morning today after the heat and humidity of yesterday uh I’ve come out this morning just to do a little bit of uh action cam uh footage for myself and for the Vlog rather than doing any uh dedicated stop footage um

Last night I think will probably be the last time that I shoot here um today is the last full day here but I’m just going to take a an easy day have a little bit of lunch outside somewhere and then relax in the Hotel this afternoon looking through the stuff that

I’ve shot whilst I’ve been here and the shoot last night I think went really well the um the buildings the old sort of medieval buildings in the his City Center were quite well lit um particularly the ones by the the river that runs through so I got some nice

Shots uh the blue hour um as you know with some really nice Reflections and stuff like that blue hour is kind of my speciality blue hour Twilight and in fact I’ve even done a uh Udi course on on the blue hour called shooting the blues where you can learn how I get to

Shoot all these uh blue hour shots the techniques I use how I plan to shoot them even my editing techniques I’ll leave a link in the description below so you can find that if you’re interested in it um tomorrow I head off to Poland to some unpronouncable Town sort of in

Southeastern no Southwestern Poland um that’s just the Waypoint on the way to crack out just to break up the journey but it does have the advantage in that it’s quite close to starle LT 3 which is the famous German prisoner of war camp for the uh British prisoners of War it

Was made famous by the film The Great Escape of course um where you you saw them actually tunneling out like 200 or 300 MERS underneath the fences and uh escaping so I’m going to see if I can pop there it’s quite close to the town that I’m going to be staying so I’ll

Just make it a wayo on the journey and spend an hour having a look around at the history of that should be quite interesting and then from the unpronounced polish town tomorrow the F the next day I will head off to krackow and I will stop at aitz on the way and

Have a look at aitz as well so anyway I’m going to have a little wander around the town do a little bit of footage with this little action cam I’m shooting on and I’ll catch you all Later So very good afternoon from Southern Poland it’s uh nearly 2:00 now and I left nurenberg at what 8:00 this morning so made some pretty good time roads are very good in Poland as well as in Germany so uh that was good I’m now at starog lft 3 the uh Infamous um British

Prisoner of war camp uh where the Great Escape took place behind me is one of the Huts from the actual um prisoner of war camp um I believe there’s a museum here so I’m going to have a little look see if that’s open it’s a Sunday so I’m

Hoping it is but we’ll see uh and if not I’m just going to have a little wander around the grounds of uh this famous location uh I’ll catch you a little bit Later For So I had a little walk around the small but really interesting Museum here um they’ve got memorabilia not only from the British prisoners of War but other International prisoners of War Americans who were shot down um and also the German guards and the German officers that looked after this place and uh

Fascinating only a couple of rooms but four Euros to get in you can’t pay by card but you can pay in Euros I didn’t have slotty but they did take Euros so that was good um so now I’m just going to have a little wander around the uh

Actual area the actual um prisoner of war camp have a look at one or two of the prisoner of war huts and see if I can find where the tunnel was actually dug so these are in fact uh replicas of the Huts I presume this is a replica of

The Hut where the prisoners broke out from um they’re all wooden so I’d imagine in the over the years they had either Fallen AP or been taken down anyway so uh I’m going to have a little look Inside I

In part three of this epic road trip to rescue our cat from Ukraine, I head to Nuremberg for a few days before visiting Stalag Luft III, site of the legendary great escape.

Check out my Blue Hour Photography Course Shooting The Blues

https://www.udemy.com/course/shooting-the-blues

Many of you that follow me will know that we had to leave our home in Odesa, Ukraine in February 2022. Unfortunately we had to leave someone behind, our cat Kiki.
You can read about leaving Ukraine here. https://www.jasonrowphotography.co.uk/blog/escaping-a-war-whats-next

After 18 months of a nomadic lifestyle in the UK, we were finally setttled enough to be able to go and get her. Cue an epic journey across Europe with my wife flying to Moldova and taking a bus to Odesa and me driving from our home in North East England to the Ukrainian border. This video series is the story of my journey across Europe in a Jaguar and the near constant changes we needed to make to the trip.
It’s a little different from my normal photography videos, it’s certainly much more personal. There is however, plenty of photography along the way, stopping in some beautiful and interesting locations.

If you are a long time follower you will know that I have fallen in love with the North East of England and have spent much of the last year documenting it photographically. You can find some of my images here. All images are available as prints up to poster sizes, fulfilled by my partner photo laboratory in Newcastle.
https://www.jasonrowphotography.co.uk/prints-of-england

Thanks for watching and if you enjoyed the video please like, comment and subscribe, it would help the channel immensely.