Latest news with #CharleyBoorman
Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Charley Boorman: Potholes? You should see the ones Ewan and I faced in Kazakhstan
It's no consolation to anyone who's recently suffered a punctured tyre or damaged alloy wheel due to a pothole, but the next time you're cursing the state of Britain's roads, count yourself lucky that you don't live in Kazakhstan. 'We'd been given a police escort out of town,' motorcycle adventurer and TV presenter Charley Boorman recalls. 'They then pulled over to the side of the road and just waved us on. We went on for another mile or so, and then this road that we were on … it was meant to take a day to get across [but] it took us almost two and a half days. It was a dead straight road through the desert that looked like a runway that had been bombed about 20 times, and it was just all over. There were potholes you'd drive into and you would disappear and come out the other end. I mean, it was extraordinary.' So, maybe we Brits shouldn't complain too much? 'Yeah, I think it's pretty good here.' Boorman sat down with us at his home ahead of the airing of a new series for Apple TV+ in which he and his motorcycling compadre, the actor Ewan McGregor, travel on 1970s motorcycles, from McGregor's house near Perth, Scotland, through Europe and Scandinavia, down to Boorman's home in the south of England. • Read more expert reviews, news and insights on cars and motoring Long Way Home follows three earlier series, beginning with with Long Way Round in 2004. That first trip covered 9,000 miles, from London to New York City, via Europe, Asia and America. In 2007, the pair followed it up with Long Way Down, which saw them journey from John o' Groats in Scotland through 18 countries across Europe and Africa, ending in Cape Town in South Africa. They donned their helmets again in 2019 for Long Way Up, which aired the following year. That ride took them from Argentina through South and Central America, finishing in Los Angeles. Boorman, son of the film director John Boorman, met McGregor on the set of The Serpent's Kiss in 1997 and the pair immediately connected over a passion for motorcycles. 'It was my big comeback movie because I was an actor before I did all this. It was Pete Postlethwaite, Greta Scacchi, Richard E Grant, Ewan McGregor … and Charley Boorman. And I was like, you know, 'I'm back'.' While the movie tanked and his acting career didn't take off in the way he had hoped, the experience still changed Boorman's life for ever. 'The film just went straight to DVD but we had a great time, and when I first met Ewan … I went up and said hello to him and said, 'You've got a Moto Guzzi California.' And he went, 'Yeah, I love motorbikes, what have you got?'' The conversation sparked a 30-year friendship as well as a jointly owned, championship-winning National Superstock 1000 racing team (part of British Superbikes support series), countless track days and long weekends away on motorbikes. And then, of course, came the idea to go further — in more than one sense. 'We ended up doing Long Way Round,' Boorman tells me. 'I've got so much to thank Ewan for really because my acting career had gone the wrong way — I'm heavily dyslexic and was really struggling to learn lines. I wasn't enjoying acting any more; it was stressing me out too much. 'I was getting less and less films and I was doing more and more painting and decorating, and doing people's houses up, and that was over a ten-year period. It was really hard to realise that your dream of being an actor and having quite a lot of success was over. So I was coming to terms with being a builder and I felt I'd let my family down, really, because I wasn't doing what I said I would do. It was quite a difficult time.' Then came a call from McGregor — he'd had a brainwave. 'I went round to his house, and he had this big map out and said, 'Look, I think we should do this.' And I was like, 'OK'.' Boorman didn't have the financial means to drop his work and leave his family for four and a half months, though, so came to an arrangement with his colleagues on the newly formed Long Way production team (which includes film-makers David Alexanian and Russ Malkin). 'I had five grand in the bank — that's all I had to my name,' Boorman explains. 'I had to make a deal with Russ and Dave and Ewan that I would get a weekly salary, because we didn't have enough money to pay ourselves.' A book deal helped to finance the trip itself. 'After that, I didn't have anything to lose by going.' '[It all came about] because of Ewan's generosity,' Boorman is at pains to point out. 'He's a very kind and generous, nice person, you know — very caring. And I think he realised that…' Boorman's sentence tails off, though the suggestion is that McGregor had spotted his friend was struggling in more ways than one. After Long Way Round, Boorman fulfilled a lifelong dream of entering the gruelling Dakar Rally, creating a show about the experience called Race to Dakar. He also made documentaries about motorbike trips from England to Sydney, then Sydney to Tokyo, and another charting a journey that took in the four extremities of Canada. Building on these adventures, Long Way Home was conceived as a stark contrast to McGregor and Boorman's previous trip. Long Way Up was a tricky one to organise and shoot, Boorman says — not only as it involved filming in foreign countries but also because he and McGregor chose to use electric motorcycles: a pair of Harley Davidson LiveWires. 'That was a real challenge,' he tells me. 'There are no fast chargers in South America, Central America or Mexico, and it was only the last four or five days [in the US] that we had access to them. So it was very complicated. And although it was amazing fun, we lost a little bit of freedom in the fact that we couldn't just stop and camp on the side of the road like we had done in the last two, Long Way Round and Long Way Down, and because you always had to plug in [overnight] as there were no fast chargers. It was a little limiting for that.' Europe and Scandinavia would have been much better suited to electric vehicles, thanks to a more mature charging infrastructure (Norway, in particular, is considered the EV capital of the world, with about 10,000 rapid chargers and almost 90 per cent of new car sales in 2024 being fully electric). But for Long Way Home, McGregor and Boorman returned to combustion bikes to avoid any need for compromise. It also adds an extra element of jeopardy, in terms of the potential for breakdowns — especially as the bikes chosen are about 50 years old. 'When you ride these old bikes, you only have an 85 per cent chance of finishing the day,' Boorman says. 'So they come with their problems.' The main reason for choosing them, though, was that McGregor wanted to stretch the legs of one of the favourites in his collection: a 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado police bike. 'Ewan's owned it for about 10 or 12 years, and he loves her. She's a gorgeous, gorgeous thing.' Boorman had to find something of similar vintage, settling on a 1973 BMW R75/5. 'I was looking at Ducatis,' Boorman says, 'but a lot of Ducatis in those days were quite sporty bikes and around the mid-Seventies, they had real reliability issues. So I wasn't sure what to do.' A German brand might prove more reliable, he thought, before spotting a BMW R75 that had been customised by a specialist for someone else. 'It was really nice because the whole front part up to the petrol tank is all original, and then the back he kind of modernised and made it like a café racer. Kind of a retro look — and I really liked the look of it.' Boorman convinced the owner to sell it to him, and then resprayed it from the original blue to his trademark burnt orange. 'I've got a quite a thing about orange bikes,' Boorman explains, and that's clear from a glance around his garage — the collection of bikes includes those from the TV shows, including the orange-hued Livewire used in series three. There's also a BMW used during his entry into the 2006 Dakar, which ended prematurely after he crashed and broke bones in one of his hands. Boorman has had a number of accidents on motorbikes, including one in 2016 during which he was clipped by a car, hit a wall and 'destroyed' both legs. But that was a small crash compared with what happened next. 'In 2018, I finally got over that [first crash]. I had cages around my leg and metal everywhere, but I had just got back to riding properly — not walking properly, but riding — and I had a much, much worse one. I just woke up in a hospital in Bloemfontein, in South Africa. I'd snapped my forearm — bent completely backwards, all the bones had come out. I broke my pelvis. I crushed my left side; broke all the ribs, collapsed lung. Head injury, brain swell, brain bleed, massive concussion.' Boorman says he doesn't remember the collision itself, only waking up 24 hours later in hospital. According to another account he has given, he has vague recollections of being transported to the hospital in the back of a pick-up truck, pleading with the driver to pull over because of the intense pain. 'That brought the number of operations up to 34 or 35. It has only been since the beginning of last year, 2024, when I started this trip with Ewan, that I've been able to walk properly. There's been a lot of pain.' Isn't it difficult to get back on the bike after such devastating accidents? 'It was pretty easy actually,' Boorman says. 'The motorcycles were the thing that kept me going — that at some point I'll be able to get back on a motorbike. 'I think if you ask people who ride horses, or ride motorcycles or bicycles or mountain bikes, or climb mountains — serious people who do it — a lot have probably had serious injuries, and all of them get back on. I don't know why; it just seems like the right thing to do. 'People talk about mental health, and about living in the present — not thinking about the past or, or wishing you were somewhere else or what's going to happen in the future. You get on your bike and you can only really think about what's going on at that moment. [It's about] those bits of decompression. 'If you've had a terrible day at work and you've got a 30-minute commute, by the time you get home, you feel great because everything's forgotten. [If] you drive home in the car, you're still working on the telephone, you're listening to the radio, you've got somebody sitting beside you … you're distracted. You're not given that chance. And then you get out the car and you're walking up to the house and you're still talking on the phone and kids come and say hello. And you're going, 'Shh, I'm on the phone,' when you shouldn't be. 'Ewan says it a lot. It really does help your mind, you know. It's mindfulness. Ever since I was six years old, I'd been doing mindfulness without realising. And I'll probably hopefully carry on right up to the end.' That's great for his mental health, I venture, but what does Boorman's wife think about it? Is there a conflict between self-care and ensuring that the ones you love aren't forced to suffer? He pauses. 'The first crash was very difficult,' he admits. 'Because it was both legs. It's very debilitating and it's a complete change of life. There was a moment where I could have lost my leg. There was a real moment whether or not we could have kept it. And so she had to go through all of that. And then, to go through another one … you know, she was more pissed off and angry about the second one! She goes, 'If I have to go down to f***ing get you again, I'm going to f***ing…' 'And fair enough, you know. She's not wanting to, but has to pick up the pieces. And then I go off again. 'But she's not that bothered. If I spend too much time at home, I see that there's a suitcase sitting by the front door. 'Time to go now, Charley.'' Which suggests that, even in their mid- to late-fifties, Long Way Home is unlikely to mark the end of McGregor and Boorman's motorcycling adventures. Is another series in the works already? 'I don't know,' Boorman tells me. 'I think, like everyone, we get close to the end [of one journey] and we start to talk about another one, because you don't want to let the one that you're on end. So, yes, we have spoken about it — but who knows?' Long Way Home is available globally on Apple TV+
Condé Nast Traveler
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Condé Nast Traveler
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on Motorcycling Through 17 Countries in Long Way Home
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman have been road-tripping together for over 20 years. In 2004, the actors—who met on the set of 1997's The Serpent's Kiss and quickly bonded over a shared love of motorcycles—drove from London to New York City, via Europe, Asia, and North America (connecting the final leg, from Siberia to Alaska, by plane). This 19,000 mile journey was documented in their acclaimed TV series Long Way Round. Having caught the road trip bug, in 2007 they then rode from John O'Groats in Scotland to South Africa's Cape Town for Long Way Down. Then in 2019, they drove from the Southern tip of Argentina to Los Angeles for Long Way Up. Last year, McGregor and Boorman got on their bikes again: Setting off from McGregor's home in Scotland, they hopped into mainland Europe, through 17 countries, ranging from the Nordic and Baltic to the Alps and the Arctic Circle, before arriving back at Boorman's abode in England. The result is Long Way Home—Apple TV+'s travel documentary that doubles as a gentle glimpse at two old friends appreciating the countries at their door-step. Below, McGregor and Boorman talk us through Long Way Home, how they decided on the route, and what locations stood out to them. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, who have traveled much of the world by motorcycle, explore locations closer to home in Long Way Home. Apple How did you decide on the route for Long Way Home? Ewan McGregor: It was when we were in Bolivia doing Long Way Up. Charley Boorman: We had a particularly trying few days in Bolivia. We really started dreaming about roads that are much smoother. EM: When we are doing trips we always start dreaming about another. I think it's a sign that we're doing something we really love. It's like we don't want it to end so we have to start dreaming about another. We'd often talk about the parts of the world that we hadn't been to. I'd always looked at going to Scandinavia and a lot of the countries we go through on this trip.
Forbes
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Ewan McGregor And Charley Boorman On ‘The Long Way Home', Friendship And Unexpected Detours
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman in 'The Long Way Home' 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+
The Independent
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
‘You have an 80% chance of getting there': Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on the joy of riding old motorcycles
When the riding gets hard, we usually have the best time,' says , talking fondly about his latest big motorcycle journey with good friend Charley Boorman, forming the fourth series in their Long Way bike travel programmes, Long Way Home. 'That's when you start to laugh a lot. The harder it is, the more bizarrely funny it becomes,' adds Boorman. Returning to our screens this month, the familiar format sees the motorbike enthusiasts get back in the saddle for the 2025 instalment, which starts at McGregor 's house in Scotland and ends at Boorman's house in England. 'Obviously it's just the long way…round,' jokes McGregor, which sees them cover 17 countries. A trip that Boorman calls 'just a short detour'. 'We were on the trickiest terrain in Bolivia, it was probably our most challenging bit of riding,' explains McGregor, which is when the duo seem to have their best ideas, communicating via the mics in their helmets. 'While we're shaking through these rocks and trying to get through this sand and dirt, we started talking about Scandinavia and that would be an amazing part of the world to explore,' he adds. It seems to be a recurring theme. 'We start daydreaming about another trip because it makes it easier to stop the one you're on,' says McGregor, acknowledging there's part of them that 'never wants to stop being on the road. It's such an escape and an adventure'. In the latest series, which started on 9 May and its 10 episodes are drip-fed weekly, they cross 17 countries and rack up almost 10,000 miles. It sees them travel the Netherlands, the Baltic coast, Scandinavia, the Arctic circle, central Europe and back to the UK. Some of the highlights include the famous Lysevegen road with 17 hairpin bends that needs to be seen from above to be properly appreciated, visiting Charley's German family from his mother's side, meeting Vikings, crossing Norwegian fjords and experiencing the Arctic Circle's lack of sunset. Though, what's most impressive is that they're even able to continue the series, considering Boorman's two horrific bike accidents. It's only been since the start 2024 that he says he's 'felt normal and been able to walk again' after many operations and trauma that comes with such crashes and long recovery. In 2016, a crash badly broke both his legs, and he almost lost one. Thankfully, he didn't, but he did lose an inch from one leg. It resulted in 20 surgeries and almost two years to recover. Then, in 2018, after a far worse crash in South Africa, his only memory is waking up in hospital 24 hours later. He suffered a snapped forearm, a broken pelvis, he broke the entire left side of his ribs, a collapsed lung and a serious head injury, all of which took his operations total to 35. For many, that would be the end of their motorbiking career, yet it was the thought of getting back on a bike that kept Boorman going. Despite not being able to walk, he knew he'd be able to ride. For him, it helps improve his mental health too. With long periods of time on the road to think with few distractions, he says it allows him to really live in the present. It's their almost addiction to riding that keeps them returning to the saddle and to the series. Though it has plenty of positives for them both, this time, they've limited the journey to 10 weeks, setting off in June with a week in the middle where they're joined by the families in Helsinki. It's a stark contrast to the 4.5-month-long trips they used to do, when both had young children. 'The older you get, the less you want to be away,' says McGregor, unable to think how they managed to be away for so long for Long Way Round. 'I can't imagine that now,' he adds. As well as shortening the trip length, their bike choice changes with every trip. With a nod to nostalgia, they both opt for classic bikes. Ewan rides a 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado, a former US police patrol bike which still has the police siren which he likes to use perhaps a little too often. And Boorman finds a 1974 BMW R75/5 which when delivered to his home, is a little more rusty than he first thought, resulting in weeks of repair work done in just a few days to get it road-ready. The bike choice was also a chance for more freedom compared to Long Way Up, where they rather over ambitiously (considering how early it was for the technology) chose to ride electric bikes. It meant they were confined by unreliable charging, a lack of faster chargers and 'all sorts of fantastic difficulties,' says Boorman, including being unable to fix problems as easily themselves, though he says it 'made it interesting'. Following on from that journey, Long Way Home is more of a back-to-basics trip, more in line with the earlier series. They knew the roads would be far better than what they've been used to, such as the weeks of gravel roads in Northern Kenya or the crater-like potholes in Kazakhstan. So riding on smooth roads in Europe meant 'we had to make it harder for ourselves,' McGregor says, laughing. Admitting old bikes come with their problems too, Boorman says: 'You only have an 80 per cent chance of getting to where you want to'. But with breakdowns and small accidents, 'come the best parts of the trip,' thanks to the people you meet, which is one of the true joys of travelling. It's the unpredictability that you can't plan for that makes for the best experiences – and stories. Though they made it home without too many dings in the bikes (or themselves), the word 'home' in the title could be read as a nod to a finale of their travel programmes. Yet it sounds like there might be plenty more fuel in the proverbial tank for whichever road they choose next. 'I wouldn't say it's the end of the line,' says McGregor, with a slightly knowing smirk.
BBC News
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'A long way home but I can't get enough of Scotland'
From Star Wars to Trainspotting – Ewan McGregor is no stranger to iconic his antics on the small screen have also stood the test of 20 years since the Perthshire actor first got on his bike with his best pal Charley the memorable trip to New York (via several continents) in Long Way Round the pair have covered dozens of countries in the Long Way Up and the Long Way on Apple TV+, the two men are taking the Long Way Home. And this time it's personal. "We're going from my house to Charley's house in England," McGregor told BBC Scotland would appear to be a simple journey, but it also takes in 15 European countries. And, according to Boorman, McGregor gets a misty look in most of them, then declares: "This looks like a bit of Scotland."The reason the series works is the lifelong friendship between the pair, playing out on can't believe he gets to keep having adventures with his friend."Seeing him in front of me or in the mirror, it's a real delight knowing that we are going off doing something we have a real passion and love for. "Doing that with your best mate is a nice feeling." McGregor adds: "This trip was amazing. I watched the first two episodes and I was thinking I'd like to go and do it again. It was a wonderful experience. "In all the other trips we have had huge distances of riding for days and days, where the landscape never changed. "But this, we had different countries coming at us every couple of days, we met people and saw specifically regional sports."In Holland we watched a pole vault-y thing over the canals, then we saw snowmobiles over water. "It was nice and the whole idea of going to our house in Scotland to Charley's house in England was a funny idea - but it made sense."One of the highlights was McGregor's send-off from his home in his father and uncle are all former members of Morrison's Academy Pipe Band which came to play the bikers off."It meant a lot to me, meant a lot to my dad to get the band out," said McGregor. In the programme, he said: "Massive band, isn't it? It was, like, nine of us in the band I was in."I used to be a side drummer in this band."My dad, before me, and my uncle. I come from a long line of drummers."Wait until they crack off, it gets the hairs on the back of your neck."McGregor is emotional about returning home. "It's home and it will always have that unique feeling for me."And now that he has a new house there, he wants to do more in Scotland."I will never feel like I have seen enough of Scotland. I love being there so much."There's whole swathes of it I've never been to. "I have done some islands but not by any means all of them - Orkney and Shetland, I've never been to. "There are loads of places I still want to explore."
