grand tour in russia

The Grand Tour will use ending from Russia special that was axed 'because of Putin'

Eurocrash sees jeremy clarkson, james may and richard hammond recycling an old idea.

The Grand Tour's new special, Eurocrash, will use an ending stunt that the team had originally planned to use in Russia but can no longer do so, Jeremy Clarkson has revealed.

Clarkson will reunite with James May and Richard Hammond for the Prime Video series special, which sees them travel through Central Europe and focusing on countries that were previously behind the Iron Curtain.

Read more: Amazon's Prime Video trolls Netflix over password-sharing crackdown

They will start in Gdańsk, in Poland, before travelling through the country and then heading to Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia.

The Grand Tour will use ending from axed Russia special

The presenter has shared how the programme's ending will feature a stunt they had planned to use in a special in Russia, the trio were meant to visit the country pre-COVID for a special and though they intended to try and film there after lockdown the special was ultimately scrapped in 2021 because of the pandemic.

Reflecting on the stunt, he said: "It involves a plane and it’s the ending we'd planned originally in Russia, that we couldn’t do because of Putin.

Read more: Everything we know about Freddie Flintoff's Top Gear host's horror crash

"We moved the ending into Scandinavia [for their 2022 special, A Scandi Flick], but we couldn't do it then either because the crew of the plane caught Covid.

"We've had this ending up our sleeves for about five years and we’ve finally pulled it off. We actually had a Ukrainian crew on that plane which was rather nice."

Hammond also spoke of the special's final stunt, sharing: "There’s a sequence with a plane which is epic. It does look awesome. It's the kind of thing you wanted to do as a kid: drive a big V-engine car onto the back of a transport plane. It’s got all of that in it. It’s not dialled down, it’s dialled up."

Without revealing too much, executive producer Andy Willman said of the stunt:"We have a stunt with a big plane that we’ve tried to do about three times and couldn’t because of Covid, so we finally got to blow our money on a great expensive plane."

James May bought his car whilst drunk and regretted it immediately

The Euro Crash special sees Clarkson, Hammond and May drive cars that nobody would use for a 1400-mile journey, but May took it one step further by buying his car after a drunken night out.

Read more: 'There is a mutual loathing' James May speaks out on relationship with his Grand Tour co-stars   ( Bang Showbiz, 2-min read )

While Clarkson chose a Mitsuoka Le-Seyde and Hammond used a Chevrolet, May went with a Crosley that he found was so slow he actually chose to use the back-up car, something that has never happened on the show before.

He explained: "Nobody has ever had to resort to the back-up car before. And to be honest, I didn't have to, I chose to, but the Crosley was so slow and uncomfortable and frankly a bit dangerous."

May said of the back-up car: "It was a Hot Rod that said ‘Beer and T***ies’ on the side. It’s the most embarrassing decision I've ever had to take in my life, but I had to balance my desire for survival in the Crosley against my desperate need not to come across as in any way insulting in the Hot Rod because it's not really a very appropriate thing."

Unfortunately for May, the back-up car also broke down which meant he missed a lot of the things that were planned for the trip, like racing in Poznań.

The Grand Tour: Eurocrash launches on Prime Video on Friday, 16 June, 2023.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

When can you see The Grand Tour’s Lochdown special?

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Three stars, three cars and a global pandemic. What could possibly go wrong?

Pretty much everything if you’re Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, who are back in a new special that takes the trio to Scotland.

Classic American cars from the 1970s are the inspiration this time around in a one-off show that sees the threesome behind the wheels of a Cadillac Coupe de Ville, a Lincoln Continental and a Buick Riviera.

It’s not long before things go awry though – not least when our heroes are tasked with building a floating bridge in the Outer Hebrides capable of supporting both them and their outsized automobiles.

There’s also a hilarious scene in which Clarkson fills May’s caravan with water via an open sun roof – something even May had to admit was ‘quite a good prank’ .

When is The Grand Tour: Lochdown coming out ?

The Grand Tour: Lochdown begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video on 30 July from midnight GMT.

That’s good news for people in America, who will be able to watch it on Thursday night due to the Transatlantic time difference.

You need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber to watch it, as The Grand Tour is an Amazon Prime production.

How hard was it to film?

The special was filmed over 10 days last year, during which time producers spent £50,000 on coronavirus tests.

According to executive producer Andy Wilman, the show had a ‘backs to the wall’ feel reminiscent of the team’s time on the BBC’s Top Gear.

‘If you don’t have Madagascar or the Mekong River it makes you work harder,’ he explained.

‘We don’t leave as much to chance, you set up more scenes and that is like going back to the old days.’

Clarkson, meanwhile, has revealed that a lot of what was filmed never came near to being included.

‘Our shooting ratio is off the charts,’ he told RadioTimes.com . ‘For every one minute, 11 get thrown away.’

When will the Grand Tour Russia special come out?

The original plan was for Jeremy, James and Richard to head to Russia for an epic, movie-sized adventure.

But those plans had to be jettisoned due to the Covid pandemic, which led to any storylines involving international travel being shelved indefinitely.

Earlier this month Clarkson admitted it was becoming ‘an absolute nightmare’ to make the show.

‘We choose a country that seems doable, work up a storyline and a route we can take and then, bang, we’re told it’s been put on the red list and we have to start again,’ he revealed.

It’s not certain if the Russia special will ever be filmed now given the restrictions. But the team have not been deterred.

They’ve instead stayed on home soil to film another UK-based special in Wales that should be out towards the end of 2021.

MORE : The Grand Tour’s Richard Hammond addresses ‘ban’ from Jeremy Clarkson series after fans call for cameo

MORE : What to watch this week from Outer Banks to The Grand Tour: Lochdown

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The Grand Tour Will Be Filming In Northern Russia

Thankfully after weeks and weeks of speculation surrounding the Grand Tour’s next episodes, we have finally had many of our questions answered during Jeremy Clarkson’s DriveTribe interview with the shows executive producer and editor, Andy Wilman .

In the interview, we received an important update in regards to the third episode of the season, set to come out after their Madagascar special – which is apparently 94% done.

Sadly, the third instalment of the worlds most popular car programme is nowhere near done.

Firstly, the location. The first episode of season 4 saw Clarkson , Hammond and May head to Vietnam for ‘ Seamen ‘, the second episode has been announced to be in Madagascar and both Jeremy and Andy have now confirmed that the third episode is to be filmed in Northern Russia:

Jeremy : “The next one we were meant to film was in Northern Russia but we obviously didn’t go – so what went wrong?”

Andy Wilman confirmed to Jeremy that the original plan was to go in March so that they could take advantage of the countries snowy season:

Andy : “Well we were supposed to go.. when was it.. early March because we wanted to catch the snow.”

However it would appear that there were some issues causing the trip to not go ahead, it wasn’t for a lack of trying and it also seems that most of the logistics were already in place for filming to commence:

Andy : “Part of the process of setting up these films, you have to spend quite a lot of money before you go. You’re paying fixers, you’re setting up stuff, you’re getting the locations sorted out, you’re shipping cars, all that kind of thing.”

Not a cheap process as I’m sure you can imagine, with Amazon and The Grand Tour having spent an awful lot of money to get everything set up prior to the filming dates in March, all while the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic was taking shape across the globe:

Andy : “It’s hundreds of thousands [of Pounds] and all the time we’re spending it, there is all this stuff going on about ‘are countries going to close their borders’… so we were spending money like crazy not knowing we could have kept going like that. And then the Russians go ‘oh actually we’ve shut the borders’ and there is no word in Russian for ‘I’ll give you a refund’.”

So not only could filming not take place, both the show and their network, Amazon, have lost a huge amount of money getting everything set up for the shoot. Inevitably, this has caused the third instalment of the show, much like the second, to be delayed – this time indefinitely:

Andy : “So we had to call it, it was the right move thank christ and now we’ve got to wait for the snow again. We’ll go next year, so we will do it.”

So don’t panic just yet, the episode will definitely happen but by the looks of it, not until 2021 – due to the requirement for snow to be underfoot (or wheel) in Russia. Either way, we’re happy being patient for now, at least episode 2 isn’t a million miles away.

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The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown: release date, trailer and new episodes explained

What we know about the show's Scotland and Russia specials

The Grand Tour season 4, episode 3 is coming on July 30, Amazon has confirmed – and it'll take co-hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May to Scotland in a special called Lochdown. The episode was actually filmed in 2020, mid-pandemic, so hopefully we won't have to wait too long to see it. The special will imitate the feeling of an American road trip – without actually requiring the British hosts to leave their country. 

There's a first trailer for The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown, too, which you can see below.

There's more good news if you're a fan of The Grand Tour Presents: a new episode has been filming this year in Wales and parts of England like Warwickshire. This dovetails with what James May said in an interview last year about filming more episodes closer to home in an effort to release them more regularly. Given how languid the releases have become lately – a year separated the release of the last two specials, Seamen and A Massive Hunt – that will come as a relief.

Below, we'll tell you everything we know about the future of The Grand Tour Presents on Amazon Prime – including details about the Scotland-based Lochdown special, what we know about the new UK episode as it films, and what happened to the lost Russia special that was originally set to follow A Massive Hunt. 

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The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown release date is July 30, 2021

The next special in The Grand Tour Presents series is called Lochdown – and it just got a release date of July 30 on Amazon Prime Video. Check out the trailer in the section below for confirmation.

That's not all that's coming from Clarkson and pals in the foreseeable future, though.

As of April 2021, another special for The Grand Tour was filming in the UK – the three hosts were spotted filming in Llandrindod Wells, Wales, by The Grand Tour Fans YouTube channel . They were each driving classic French cars, which hints a little at the theme for the episode. Jeremy Clarkson was apparently spotted driving a Citroën CX Break, James May was glimpsed in a Renault Avantime, while Richard Hammond was reportedly in a Matra Murena, according to the channel. Later, the hosts were spot in Leamington in England, filming near a retail park.

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That episode seems like it's probably a while away, though. Let's go through what we know about the Lochdown special's filming, first. A first teaser for that episode was released on social media earlier this year – Clarkson describes the special as The Grand Tour 'unplugged'.

Earlier plans to record an episode in Russia were put on-hold because of the pandemic (see below) – so the Lochdown special was filmed in Scotland across nine days earlier in 2020 instead.

"We did it in area of Scotland with not many people," co-host James May told BT . "We didn’t interact with the locals really. There were complicated systems set up for cleaning everything and it was a bit tiresome going through lots of procedures and being tested every day, but it didn’t get in the way of filming to be honest."

The hosts couldn't go to the pub after filming the episode, which must've been a challenge. 

While it might be a long wait until the trio and their crew can head to more exotic locations, the intent is to keep making episodes in locations where it's easier to pull off – hence why a Wales-filmed special probably makes sense. "In the short term we might have to reduce our travel ambitions and we’ll have a better chance of doing it," May says. "Better to film in the UK and deliver regularly than promise the earth and not deliver anything. The Grand Tour may become a little more domestic. But it will still be us three which is the important thing. And cars."

That bodes well for the future – and who knows, maybe we'll start seeing episodes of The Grand Tour season 4 land more regularly than once every year again.

The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown trailer

Och aye the new trailer for The Grand Tour Presents... #Lochdown is here pic.twitter.com/0eobci0wpL July 15, 2021

Check out the trailer for The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown above, which was released in July 2021.

To film the upcoming Scotland special during the pandemic, the crew formed a bubble, and no one caught Covid-19 during the shoot. It was reported that the hosts were seen driving classic American cars from Edinburgh to the Hebrides – which suggests some kind of Route 66-style road trip element. 

Clarkson was seen driving a blue Lincoln, May was seen driving a red Cadillac, and Hammond was seen in a green Buick. The trio also took part in a drag race on a runway somewhere in south Scotland, for which the cars mentioned were apparently modified, and were seen towing caravans at one point too.

May says that being a bit closer to the home for the hosts doesn't matter that much – after all, viewers on Amazon Prime Video could be watching it from anywhere. "If you're watching The Grand Tour from Sri Lanka, Scotland is as exotic and beautiful as Sri Lanka is from Scotland, so there's always going to be a large part of the audience which finds anywhere in the world fascinating."

And hey, anything that gets the hosts to film new episodes faster seems like a good thing. 

The Grand Tour season 4 Russia special: what we know

Yes, the next Special will land later this year.Yes, it’s filmed in Madagascar and yes, there will be cars.Yes, we wanted to go to Russia.No, we couldn’t (we all know why).Yes, we will try again.No, we don’t know when.Yes, we will keep you updated.#TheGrandTour July 7, 2020

The next planned episode for The Grand Tour Presents was meant to take the hosts to Russia – and this is still the idea, one day. It's just been postponed for now due to the pandemic. James May says that lots of preparation has been made for this special, but that it's "just impossible right now". Hopefully, with the incoming wave of vaccines, that might be able to change in future – but it seems unlikely you'll see a Russia special of The Grand Tour at any point in the next year or so.

After the next UK special, though, Clarkson did confirm the plan was to film abroad – they're just not sure where yet.

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Samuel is a PR Manager at game developer Frontier. Formerly TechRadar's Senior Entertainment Editor, he's an expert in Marvel, Star Wars, Netflix shows and general streaming stuff. Before his stint at TechRadar, he spent six years at PC Gamer. Samuel is also the co-host of the popular Back Page podcast, in which he details the trials and tribulations of being a games magazine editor – and attempts to justify his impulsive eBay games buying binges.

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Russia Special (TGT)

• View history

The Russia Special was supposed to be the fifth episode of the fourth series of the Amazon Prime motoring show  The Grand Tour , but has subsequently been cancelled and replaced with A Scandi Flick .

It was to be filmed in March of 2020, however due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filming was delayed and then due to recent crisis in Russia, the trio had to change the filming location to Scandinavia , which was filmed in March of 2022. A recent interview with Andy Wilman, the special would've seen the trio use their Rally Cars, (Clarkson in an Audi RS4, Hammond in a Subaru Impreza WRX STI and May in a Mitsubishi Evo VIII) to escape a Gulag, a political camp in the middle of the White Sea and reach Murmansk.

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A short history of British tourism in Imperial Russia

It was St Petersburg, founded in 1703, that was to prove the great tourist attraction. Source: Bridgeman

British tourism in Russia was certainly not invented by Intourist during the Cold War. An otherwise tragic expedition to discover a northern sea route first brought the English to Muscovy in the middle of the 16th century and it was essentially trade and profit that inspired further embassies and led to the establishment of a Russia Company to exploit that trade. However the concept of travelling for pleasure or what was often termed “out of curiosity” was much undertaken in the ancient world. What was new was travelling to barbaric, wild Russia, land of snow and bears and wolves, and of peoples with the strangest habits and, as an Englishman would have it, ‘to vices vile inclin’d”.

The Grand Tour goes East

The 17th century saw the emergence in Britain of the Grand Tour, when young members of the aristocracy and gentry travelled through Europe, usually accompanied by tutors. Although Dr Samuel Johnson might suggest that “the grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean”, the northern lands increasingly beckoned more intrepid travellers.

British tavellers in Russia. Source: Anthony Cross

It was St Petersburg, founded in 1703, that was to prove the great tourist attraction, fulfilling the hopes of its first Governor-General Prince Alexander Menshikov that it “should become another Venice, to see which Foreigners would travel thither purely out of curiosity”. One of the first Englishmen to be so attracted some three decades after its foundation recorded in his diary that “I am well contented with my journey, and think it very much, worth any curious man’s while, going to See, and to Stay there three weeks or a month, but after Curiosity is Satisfied, I think one could amuse oneself better, in more Southern Climates”.

Searching Russia’s economic past for secrets of growth

By the end of the 18th century, another traveller was writing that “Russia begins now to make a part of the grand tour, and not the least curious or useful part of it”. The British tourist was also beginning to explore other parts of the rapidly growing Russian empire, travelling south via Moscow to Russia’s newly acquired territories around the Black Sea and in the Crimea, often travelling on to Constantinople.

Pioneering lady

Lady Elizabeth Craven was the first English woman to publish an account of her journey, helping to boost the appeal of the Crimea and newly founded Odessa for a growing stream of travellers up to the Crimean War. A remarkable journey was undertaken towards the end of the reign of Catherine the Great by a young English milord, accompanied by his Oxford tutor, John Parkinson, who recorded in diaries their epic journey to Siberia as far as Tobolsk and then south to Astrakhan and the Caspian and the edge of the Caucasus before crossing to the Crimea and returning through Ukraine to Moscow and St Petersburg.

Russia’s first tour guides

As the Grand Tour gave way to middle-class tourism, an indication that Russia was indeed beginning to appeal to a wider public was the appearance of the ‘tourist guide’.

Royal ties that kept Russia in the fight

By the late 1830s there had appeared a Guide to St. Petersburg & Moscow, by Hamburg, and by steam-packet, across the Baltic to Cronstadt; fully detailing every form and expense from London-Bridge to St. Petersburg . It was soon followed by the first ‘Murray’ for Russia in 1839 which was several times updated, and ultimately, by the first English-language Baedeker guide to Russia, appearing in 1914 and offering information that was soon to be made obsolete and irrelevant by World War I and the October Revolution. It was reprinted in 1971 as an historical curiosity.

Ascent to the Caucasus

Following Russia’s further territorial acquisitions in the 19th century, Georgia, the Caucasus, Circassia, and Bessarabia joined Siberia, even Kamchatka, became favoured destinations for intrepid tourists and better prepared explorers. Among them were a striking number of members of the Royal Geographical Society. In the early 1840s Sir Roderick Murchison, soon to become the Society’s long-serving president, travelled extensively through the Urals, producing a work of lasting value on the geology of the region. His achievement was matched by another future president, the geographer and mountaineer Douglas Freshfield, who first climbed in the Caucasus in 1868, conquered Mts Kazbek and Elbruz, and published by the end of the century his monumental account of The Exploration of the Caucasus .

The Caucasus became a magnet for followers of mountaineering, which had gained increasing popularity in Britain following the establishment of the Alpine Club of London in 1857. One of the club’s early presidents published The Frosty Caucasus , recounting his tramps through the Caucasus in 1874.

Welcome to Siberia

Railways opened Russia to the tourist, particularly the Trans-Siberian and the Transcaspian. Begun in 1879, a few years before the Trans-Siberian, the Transcaspian railway followed the route of the Silk Road from its terminus at the harbour of Krasnovodsk on the Caspian via Bokhara to Samarkand, which had become part of the Russian empire in 1868. By the end of the century it was extended to Tashkent, which became the capital of Russian Turkistan soon after its seizure in 1865.

The Trans-Siberian caught the imagination, however. Begun in 1890 but only completed in 1916, it was the great ‘ribbon of iron’ along which the anthropologist and translator Annette Meakin travelled towards Vladivostok with her mother in 1900, the first Englishwomen to accomplish that journey. In 1900 the journey still involved a ferry ride across Lake Baikal on new steel-hulled ice-breaking boats that had been built in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and it was only in 1904 after horrendous difficulties in construction that the Circum-Baikal railway was completed and it became possible to travel the whole route by rail.

In 1900, the Russian Ministry of Ways of Communication published an English-language Guide to the Great Siberian Railway that described in exhaustive detail the main railway and all its connecting lines, with over 350 photographs. If its aim was to entice Anglo-American tourists to journey along the whole length of the railway then it succeeded. There are literally dozens of accounts from the first two decades of Nicholas’s reign about journeys on the Trans-Siberian.

By the 1890s cyclists were pedalling their way through Russia. Sir John Foster Fraser and friends cycled from Odessa through the Crimea and the Caucasus as part of a world tour that took 774 days. British cycling enthusiast Robert Jefferson claimed a record for his round trip from Warsaw to Moscow in 50 days in 1895. Returning three years later, and accompanied by Russian cycling friends, he followed the Volga and, crossing the Kirgkiz steppe, eventually reached Khiva, where he was received by the Khan.

A tea party in a Kirhis tent. Source: Anthony Cross

The war and the events of 1917 effectively put paid to British tourism, but by then it can be said that the British had penetrated virtually every corner of the Russian empire. Present-day tourism again offers fantastic opportunities to explore a vast country, but you may well find that wherever you go, a British traveller or tourist has been there long before you.

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This is just a note to say how much Linda and I enjoyed our Grand Deluxe Trans Siberian Tour Rail adventure with Travel all Russia. We were especially glad to have seen the subways in Moscow which were not on the original agenda, but that our guide made sure we saw. Also, the opening ceremony at Naadaam in Mongolia was not in the schedule, but we were delighted to have a front row seat. It was an outstanding show.

Small Group Trans-Siberian Journey summer 2016

Our journey to Russia was a great one. All of the guides were wonderful and everything was so well organized.

There are just a few things I'd suggest. I think you need to warn future travelers about the Chinese train. There were not two lower berths as we were told and since neither of us was able to climb to the top bunk, we had to take turns sleeping! Also, the train was disgustingly dirty.

Other than that, the other accommodations were fine. As far as the food, there was much too much fish and borscht.

We were totally thrilled with our trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway

We were totally thrilled with our trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway!

The trains were clean, comfortable and always on time.

The hotels, though varied, were always welcoming and attractive. The restaurants, for the most part, served us well.

Our guides were knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Once a guide could not join us because of a medical problem, and the next day another guide took us to two days' sites in one day.

Many thanks for arranging a most memorable Epic Trans-Siberian Adventure journey for us!

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22 March 2024

MIR Travel Company will tell you where and how to get there! The excursion is called the Golden Ring of Russia and passes through several Old Russian cities. The route itself was developed in 1967 with the inclusion of 8 cities: Sergiev Posad, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Rostov the Great, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Ivanovo, Suzdal and Vladimir. 

26 February 2024