Ewan McGregor And Charley Boorman On ‘The Long Way Home', Friendship And Unexpected Detours
The final episode of The Long Way Home is now streaming on Apple TV+. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman spent the entire summer traveling across Europe on their bikes and they visited about 17 countries, from Scotland to Sweden, Austria, Finland and France.
We often say that going on a trip with a friend can become a great friendship -and personality- test, especially when the trip in question might include perilous situations and weather hazards. McGregor and Boorman have been best friends since the 1990s, so I asked them if they had learned something new about each other and about themselves during this fourth trip together.
McGregor said, 'We started our first trip in 2004, 21 years ago, and we didn't have any idea, and in a way that's the beauty of it, of what we were doing. We wanted to do a round-the-world trip and film it. We wanted it to be really simple, one camera, we didn't realize we were doing something that would be so hugely part of our lives.'
He added: 'We often talk about what we've learned is about the fact that you can travel down the same stretch of roads, even the same motorbikes and have two entirely different experiences. I might be in a bad mood, feeling tired or missing home, and Charley can be having an up day, and when we did the first trip, when that would happen, it would feel like something was wrong. And what we learned through doing four trips now, is that it is right, Charley is having his experience and I'm having mine, and they should exist together. But it takes you a while to learn that. And also to be more understanding of each other, those early trips were four and a half months, it's a long time to be side by side, 24 hours a day. Now we read each other better, if Charlie needs a minute I can recognize that, or if I need picked up, Charlie will pick me up. It's nice, we allow ourselves to have our own experience I guess.'
'The Long Way Home'
During their trip across Europe, the two friends have had to overcome technical difficulties with their bikes and different kind of obstacles on the road. But some of these obstacles sometimes turned out for the best, as they allowed the adventurers to find a solution, wether it was a new path or a new camping site, which resulted in an even bigger adventure.
During their stay in Finland, McGregor and Boorman drove to the lake region of the country, and simply by talking with locals there, they ended up finding their new camping site on a small island. This last minute decision led the two men to one of the most breathtaking locations of their journey. Another day, a closed road led the two friends to a new path, which resulted in McGregor and Boorman meeting new people and discovering new sceneries.
I asked them if they had a favorite memory of an unexpected detour from this trip.
Boorman said, 'You mentioned the road closure, there was some building work going on and we were delayed. Max and Claudio, who are two cameramen who shared a bike together, well Max had dropped a glove, and he was bummed out about that because it was getting cold. Anyway the road was closed, we were pulled over and the guy said, 'Oh just so you know, the car behind has found your glove, and if you wait there, you'll get it back.' We went somewhere else to get food while Max waited for the glove, we set up camp, Max turned up because these people had given him a lift, and they said they could get up the hill but that they couldn't get out, they were going to stay on top of the mountain, so they invited us for a coffee.'
McGregor added: 'It was as high as you could be in this valley, right in the wind, we got there, took our helmets off, they gave us a coffee from their RV, lovely, but by the time it went to my lips it was stone cold. And then I heard Charlie saying 'I'm gonna put my helmet back on' because it was so cold!'
'The Long Way Home' Little gestures and improvised moments like this one made for some very precious memories during this road trip.
McGregor then remembered an anecdote from their 2004 trip to Mongolia.
He said, 'We had GPS units and maps. And in Mongolia, there's no road, it's just tracks. So on the GPS, all it showed were lakes. So we had to look for the right shape of the lake on the map. There was a lake up to our right, a huge one, and we were going to cross where the lake turns into a river but the bridge had gone or it was too deep, whatever. Nobody could cross, and they said it could be days, so we went around the lake.'
He added: 'We rode off road around this lake, it took us all day to get around it. But I remember crouching in the shade of my bike, you just put your hand on the stand, and that was the only shade there was, it was baking hot. It's funny because Mongolia was also very cold and rainy other times. But that was an amazing detour and it sticks in my mind because we were never quite sure we had made the right choice.'
All episodes of The Long Way Home are now streaming on Apple TV+
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