Long Way Round – Meeting Charlie, Ross and Claudio

As you can tell Long Way Round is one of the many inspirational bike travel adventures that I’ve been interested in. So you can imagine my delight when Charlie Boorman and his crew members, Ross and Claudio made a visit to our local BMW showroom.

For those of you who haven’t yet heard of Long Way Round, why not?! It is a series of one-hour episodes for TV and a book capturing Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s trip as they travelled through Eastern Europe, Kazakstan, Mongolia, Russia and then Alaska and across USA ending in New York. Their cameraman Claudio was also on a motorbike and Ross their producer followed in one of two support vehicles.

I developed a particular interest in this trip because a friend of mine, Austen Fairbairn, (trans Africa veteran) sold a bike to Ewan McGregor. I then stumbled across details of the trip on the internet and my curiosity grew. In addition, they drove BMW GS bikes, which meant I had even more reason to be interested in their adventure.

Quite obviously I watched the episodes on DVD. After the first episode Paul and I fell silent. These guys had a whole team supporting them and sponsorship coming out of their ears. No need to go into the kind of panic that set in.

Long Way Round is first-rate viewing and I would recommend getting hold of the DVD. I read part of the book too but chose to read my motorcycle manual instead as I don’t have masses of time left to get my head around technical stuff. The book is good too and I liked the beginning bit about Charlie and Ewan’s first encounters and falling in love with motorbikes. I think for bikers these first love stories are very touching. Charlie has been a wheelie popping nutter since knee high to a grasshopper. He (and I) think he may be the only person in history to wheelie over the Russian border – three times to be exact. Read the first chapter even if you have to find a sneaky corner in a WH Smiths.

Charlie is The Man as far as motorbikes go. Having seen him in person, I can vouch that he is every bit as genuine as genuine can be. He has one of the most worthy of respect passions for motorbikes, ever. All the guys were exactly as they were in the series. Although these guys are celebrities, they are bikers, which meant they were easy to talk to, passionate and interesting. Claudio had no off road experience before the trip – respect – and proof yet again that it is possible to simply do it. Ross told me it’s not possible to BBQ a bear unless approved by an authority. This nugget of information may save me from catching fatal parasites some day.

At times I’ve been worried about not having oodles of cash to do the trip but after listening to the guys and their account of the trip I realise that money isn’t really an issue and won’t make or break the trip. Obviously I need some money but it will all work out.

Charlie is planning on doing the Dakar in January 06! This is going to be filmed so watch out, it will be excellent. There was also mention of a trans Africa trip.

I am so glad I’m chucking the job, the rat race, the traffic jams and the office politics. I am so lucky to be able to choose to live my life as I have chosen to.

Roll on October.

For more information on Long Way Round go to http://www.longwayround.com/lwr.htm