I cannot understate the impact that Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor's 'Long Way' documentary series has made not just on me, but the entirety of the motorcycling community. And that continues with 'Long Way Home,' the duo's new Apple TV+ series debuting today.
There was a time, prior to the debut of the series, when only a select few intrepid lunatics would go off on some far-flung off-road adventure on a tall cruiser-type bike, ala the original BMW GS. They'd hop about the continent, go on long trips, and that was pretty much it. But then 'Long Way Round' debuted in 2004, and the entirety of the motorcycling world changed.
That original series not only showed this intimate adventure between two lifelong best friends as they embarked on their quest around the world, but they showed the riding public that there were still those wild places waiting to be explored. And they showed off exactly how capable an ADV was, as well as what they could be with a few choice modifications.
Hand on heart, without these two motorcyclists and their silly adventure, you probably wouldn't have the explosion of the ADV segment. And by that logic, you wouldn't have Yamaha's Tenere, Honda's Transalp, or my lord and savior, the Royal Enfield Himalayan 450.
Seriously, that's how much these two have influenced the motorcycling world. And they've really done so by being themselves and showcasing their 30-plus-year friendship.
"We've got sort of a relationship that we don't, well, speaking personally, don't share with anybody else, you know," McGregor tells RideApart, "I've been all over the world with Charlie and ridden behind him or in front of him, you know, every mile of our journeys."
He added, "Somebody just said that we've spent more than a year of our lives actually side by side doing these trips, which is, of course, true, but an amazing, amazing stat, I didn't realize that. You know, we love doing what we do, and we like, we love the adventure of it. That doesn't seem to change, the desire to get out there and see, you know, different parts of the world from the back of a bike. It's an amazing privilege, really."
Charley chimed in, saying, "Yeah, it's very nice about being on the back of a bike and you know, when you're going through different countries, what amazes me is you go through a country and you experience that country and you get to a border. And then you cross over that border and everything changes, the tarmac, the way signposts are done, people's language, food, how they dress, the architecture, gardens, I mean, everything."
Excitedly, Charley proclaimed, "Petrol stations! You go to petrol stations and they sell different things in different ways and you know, it's so nice to be able to do it that way. And then I think when you ride a motorcycle, I think people, I don't know if it's, you turn up somewhere dusty and and damp or whatever, it is that people react very differently and they want to invite you into their homes. And we've found that a lot over the years, that the generosity of people, you know, is incredible."
Longevity, even among best friends, however, is a hard thing to continue. And Charley has routinely seem himself in the hospital, the last being a particularly nasty crash that put him in intensive care. To that end, I asked them whether they ever thought they'd still be doing this after 20 years, as last year marked the 20th anniversary of the original 'Long Way Round' series.
"I don't think we thought very much about not doing it for 20 years, nor did we, yeah, we had no idea when we started thinking about ‘Long Way Round’ where it would lead us, you know," says McGregor, adding, "I don't think so. But it's so amazing to get to do it and to still do it. I can't imagine ever not wanting to do it, you know what I mean?"
"And I think when we're, you know, when we started planning the first one, I think it stemmed from, we were great friends, been friends for 30 years, and we used to go and do track days together, we used to go out, we'd go ride out somewhere with a bunch of friends and come back," added Charley, "And we were starting to sort of look for a bit of a longer journey and then Ewan rang me up one day and he said, “Charlie, look, forget going down to Spain with our wives on the back. You’ve got to come over to my house and I've got this idea. And he said, ‘Instead of Spain, let's ride to China.’ And then it quickly turned into New York and was like, oh, OK, and then we sort of thought, how do we achieve that, you know, how can we get it done? And it kind of, one thing stumbled into another.”
But the pair didn't know what would happen next.
“I remember sitting outside, was it Bulworth Street or wherever, I can't remember, on the first one and we were sitting on the road and we had these completely oversized [BMW] GSs with way too much stuff in them," recalls Boorman, "We had a full toolkit each, and I mean it was just ridiculous. And then we were off, and we still had really no idea what we were really doing, and I think that was maybe the fun of it. We planned it, but we hadn't really planned it, and we'd always wanted it to be, you know, just whatever happens, happens. And I think we got lucky, and people wanted to see it, and then did another one and so on, and you know, it just kind of steamrolled into where we are now.”
“We shot that first one on mini tapes!" exclaimed McGregor, "We had to change these little video cassettes all the time. And get them back to London without them being wiped or… We got to the Road of Bones in far eastern Russia, and there were no bridges, the bridges had all washed away. But there was never a sense of, I look back on it, there was never a sense of not getting there, we were always gonna get there. It was just a question of how. But I love that spirit."
“This self-belief in all of it has always been there with the both of us,” added McGregor, “And we just love the problem solving of it is great too, you know. And we don't do it alone, we have our two producers, Russ and Dave, who are every bit part of this experience. We are a four man band, aren't we, really? But it's great fun.”
And based on the new series, as well as the drive of Ewan and Charley, that self-belief of going further, adventuring more, and getting out and going for a ride, that isn't slowing down anytime soon. The new series, which debuted today, is a testament to that, as well as the longevity of the pair's friendship, and the lasting bond that motorcycles create within friends, and indeed, the world.
The gents also took a good while of my very short time to give me hell over the fact that I don't currently have a motorcycle in my garage after spotting my helmets above my desk. They did, finally, relent in their good-natured attacks on my character after I reminded them I get them for free to test, to which Ewan replied, "Yeah, that's the way to do it." Them giving me shit was the highlight of my year.
'Long Way Home' is now streaming on Apple TV+, and if you were a fan of the first three series, you'll be a fan of this one, too.
