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Charley Boorman
Ewan McGregor
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Book
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Publisher | Little Brown | ||
ISBN | 978-075153680 | ||
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Reviewer
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Jayne
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Synopsis
In this highly entertaining book, fellow film actors and bike enthusiasts Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman travel 20,000 miles around the world by motorbike. They will encounter many troublesome situations on the way, ranging from extreme and threatening weather to impenetrable terrain, and will face challenges such as caviar fishing in the Caspian sea, wrestling with the Mongolian Olympic team and riding with the Canadian Mounties. Whilst throwing themselves enthusiastically into the culture of each new country - from Alaska to Mongolia, from Canada to Kazakhstan - the two friends will also have to rely on each other's good humour, as the journey tests their relationship and their stamina to the limits. Long Way Round is the action-packed account of the trip and a true portrait of friendship in extremis - as irreverent, engaging and articulate as Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman themselves.
Review
I have become a great fan of Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor after meeting Charley at their headquarters recently in London, when Vicky and I met Charley to interview him on their latest trip 'The Long Way Down'.
But I'm going to talk about their book 'The Long Way Round' which is the trip that they did in 2004. They started off from London and went through France, Belguim, Germany across the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia then flying across to Alaska down through Canada and North America arriving at their finish destination New York.
This trip was some 22,345 miles including the flight back to the UK from New York; a massive undertaking considering a great deal of the route was not on tarmac roads like we have in the UK! They must have had a really bumpy time for over a third of the way on this trip!
They had two major problems on this trip and one was when one of the support vehicles had a crash and rolled twice, but no one was injured which was amazing although the driver was stiff for a few days! The other was when Claudio's bike broke down(the camara man travelling with them) and it could not be repaired until they could get parts flown to them some few hundred miles further on; so he rode a smaller bike which they called the 'Red Devil' because it was able to keep up with them and seemed to cope well with the terrain!
When they arrived in Alaska and went on down through Canada and into the USA and arrived in New York they had travelled some 18,887miles there was still some 3456 to go to get back to their start point but they did that by air; in total they covered some 22,345 miles some journey.
On their trip they made three stops into projects run by UNICEF in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Mongolia, they found these visits moving and they say these were some of the highlights of their trip.
I love this book with its spills and thrills and the different countryside and areas they rode through. The book is written in a way that you want to get to the next page to find out what happens next, it has been made into a DVD and has excellent footage of the trip and their comments on and about their trip all the way through from start to finish. I can not wait to see what they do next. Brilliant, for bikers everywhere and for those who haven't got the nerve to go on one you can live it though them brilliantly!
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