I think we’ve taken a very significant step towards realising a long-held Chain Gang dream.
The biggest thing about The Chain Gang is that groups of people share a week of cycling together and become friends. When I’m guiding I regularly hear conversations around the dinner table every evening “how can we share our photopraphs with each other?”.
Well, now the answer is that you can, it’s easy, and here’s how.
The Chain Gang has a Flickr account, which enables us to host groups and effectively unlimited photographs. I’ve set up groups for each of our bike tours, all 8 of them, 5 in France, 2 in Italy and 1 in the UK. By joining the Dordogne group, for example, anyone can add photos to the group and share them with whoever they like.
Devon
Umbria
Tuscany
Burgundy
Provence
Loire Valley
Bordeaux
Dordogne
It’s Flickr, so inevitably there is a little bit of clunkiness involved, but nothing too onerous. Although you don’t have to be a member of Flickr to view photos, you do need to be a member to put your own photos on Flickr and place them in a Chain Gang group. But it’s free, and very easy.
At the end of each tour I plan to email all our cyclers with an invitation to join Flickr, and a link to the relevant tour (e.g. a link to the Loire Valley group). Our groups are what Flickr call ‘Public, by invitation only’. It means that only Chain Gangers will be able to add photos, but anybody will be able to view them. My hope is that we’ll amass a vast library of photographs from hundreds of us which we can share with anybody with enough interest to look.
I’ve added 6 photographs to each group to get us started. My plan is that I won’t add any more photograps from our own archives – we’ll only add new photos , and photos from you. Will you help me?
If you already have some photos you’d like to share, can you please email [email protected]? I’ll send you an invite, and we can all get sharing. Thank you!
