TV SHOW producers have apologised to residents of a Powys village after farmland was left littered with debris of smashed up cars following filming.

The Grand Tour – which stars former Top Gear icons Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May – spent time on location in Mid Wales last month. The trio were spotted across Brecon and Radnorshire throughout the final week of April; they stayed at the Metropole Hotel in Llandrindod Wells while footage also appeared on social media of 51-year-old Hammond repeatedly ramming a maroon Renault people carrier into a Citroen Saxo as he tried to manoeuvre into a tight parking spot on a quiet residential street in Crickhowell.

It looked like a serious bout of road rage, before Hammond emerged from the parked vehicle and calmly walked off, trailed by a TV crew – as well as several residents filming on their mobile phones.

But the show, now in its fourth season on Amazon Prime Video, courted anger when a resident in Beulah posted a video on Twitter on April 26, showing smashed up pieces of bumper, wing mirrors and lights that had seemingly wilfully been left strewn around a field near the village, located between Builth Wells and Llanwrtyd Wells.

Mark Easthope, known as The Blue Jumper Man on Twitter, posted the footage, which he discovered while out walking on Friday, April 23. He tweeted: “@BBC_TopGear/@thegrandtour whomever was filming in #beulah #wales on 23/04/21 you could have taken your #crash #damage with you and not left it on a #PublicBridleway in @PowysCC. I'm sure 1 of your 10 production cars could have picked it up! #CarShow #littering #Unexcusable.”

Andy Wilman, executive producer of The Grand Tour, said the debris was a mistake on their part rather than a “cavalier attitude” to the Powys countryside, and he apologised to local walkers and residents.

“Damage gets done when we film but we do endeavour to clean up,” said Andy, who created the show along with Clarkson, Hammond and May.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to think we’re litter louts who just come to the countryside and use it as a playground, because we absolutely don’t do that.

“We had a strict tidy up system in place, we paid extra money for people to come and tidy up because there was more damage as the day went on. It happened on our watch. It wasn’t our policy to turn our backs on whatever we do.

“We had a system in place, in cooperation with the landowner, and it was a mistake rather than a cavalier attitude.

“When we filmed our off-road driving on the farmland we had a rigorous system in place, agreed in advance with the landowner, for clearing up any debris that may result from car damage. It worked for 99 per cent of the clear up but we obviously missed a bit and that happened on our watch, so I do apologise to the walker who got upset by what he saw.

“Even though it was a genuine oversight and not an act of disregard for our surroundings, he was right to kick off.”

The crew have been all over the world filming the show since it first aired in 2016, including Madagascar, Cambodia and Lapland, but Andy said they had decided to stay a little closer to home during the coronavirus pandemic due to not being able to fly off to their usual exotic locations. And while places like Crickhowell and Beulah may not quite be Timbuktu, Nepal and Bangladesh – where they were due to go this year – Mr Wilman said the UK won’t be matched for beauty.

“I can’t say too much about the storyline of this series but normally we do big foreign shoots, we go around the world and obviously we haven’t been able to do that,” said Andy, who produced Top Gear from 2002-15.

“So, in lockdown, we’ve made smaller specials in the UK. We did one in Scotland which is coming out this summer and one now in England and Wales. If you can’t go somewhere far away and exotic you look for the most beautiful spots you can close to home, and Wales was beautiful that day. It was amazing where we were. We spent a week in Wales and had a fantastic time.

“The episode with the Mid Wales segment will probably be out towards the end of the year. Coming here is something we’d maybe like to do again. We should be going to Timbuktu and Nepal and Bangladesh – places not quite as glamorous as Wales – but we just can’t. Not many places match Scotland and Wales for beauty.”