Series two of The Grand Tour will set up permanent base much closer to home — less than 10 miles from Jeremy Clarkson’s home, in fact.
While the Top Gear dream team traversed the world for series one, the latest installment will see a marquee situated in the heart of the sprawling Great Tew estate.
Amazon said hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May’s tent has been given its new home in the Cotswolds – in order to preserve ‘their sore joints, struggling lungs and combined age of 158’.
The first series travelled to nine different countries, where giant tent sets were erected in South Africa, Germany, and the United States.
The motoring show’s bosses have stripped back on the jet-setting and are now setting up home less than 10 miles from co-host Jeremy Clarkson’s home
The new season will be shot in a marquee that resembles the one used for the Great British Bake Off on millionaire Nicholas Johnston’s sprawling Great Tew estate, in the Cotswolds
Series One: Amazon paid Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond £35.8million to make The Grand Tour and are still counting the cost of the huge investment
It means the trio were paid more than £2million per installment for the first series of the Grand Tour
Series one saw the former Top Gear team dream traverse nine different countries where they set up the show’s base tents
But the new episodes will be shot in a marquee that resembles the one used for the Great British Bake Off.
The huge tent will be based on millionaire Nicholas Johnston’s sprawling Great Tew estate in the Cotswolds – less than 10 miles from Clarkson’s home.
The farmland is also the site of the summer’s Wilderness and Cornbury festivals.
The show’s new permanent base offers a little relief to producers, who are still counting the cost of co-host Richard Hammond’s recent car crash.
Co-presenters Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson will still be travelling across the globe for the new series, but the tent will not
The show’s new permanent base offers a little relief to producers, who are still counting the cost of co-host Richard Hammond’s recent car crash
The farmland is also the site of the summer’s Wilderness and Cornbury festivals, set in the idyllic surroundings of the Cotswolds
The accident-prone TV star was filming a time-trial challenge for the motoring show in Switzerland in June, when he lost control of the Rimac Concept One electric supercar he was driving, plummeted down a hill and flipped the motor over.
He was airlifted to a local hospital with nothing more than a fractured knee.
Richard Hammond takes a puff of an electric cigarette while preparations are underway for filming of the second series
Co-host Jeremy Clarkson speaks with members of the production team on a radio during filming for the second series in Croatia in May this year
Responding to fans’ concerns following Hammond’s crash, Clarkson wrote: ‘I’ve been up since dawn, rewriting all of the scripts and ideas we had to accommodate the fact that Hammond can’t drive for the next few months.
‘He is lying in a bed in the Swiss Alps, while pretty nurses attend to his every need, and give him drugs.’
Announcing plans to ground the Grand Tour in Oxfordshire for season two, executive producer Andy Wilman added, ‘We’ll keep the studio in one place, and given how accident-prone they (hosts) are at the minute, that can only be a good thing.’