Ewan McGregor And Charley Boorman - Long Way Round [Special Edition] [DVD] [2007]

Good value

I live in a bubble without TV, newspapers or telephone, and little interest in celebrities, so I had absolutely no idea who Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman were, but they were riding around the world on Beemer GS’, so they had to be worth watching, especially as I have been toying with buying one recently and doing some decent distances on it.I have some experience of riding bikes reasonable distances, but only within the UK, whether it was riding my KLR650 from Sussex to see my then girlfriend in York every other weekend or riding my heavily laden trailer-towing Goldwing around the UK attending events every other weekend. None of this was in any way as challenging as what these guys took on. My greatest strain was stretching out to reach the can of drink suspended in its gimbal from the bars of the Goldwing, and deciding whether to stretch out my feet onto the cruiser boards. I had comfortable tarmac all the way until I reached a well rolled field somewhere up north where I could park up the bike, throw up the Khyam tent and drop into the bar for a drink and food.Firstly buy the special edition DVD set as advised by the other reviews.Spoilers from here….It has all of the set up of the expedition, which is hugely interesting. For a long time the garage for the bikes sits empty of bikes and equipment, and you think that they will be going nowhere, but things slot into place. KTM decide that they are not worthy of their bikes. You must be kicking yourself now guys! BMW got such great advertising out of this, and it might be part of the reason that whenever you see a group of bikers, especially European bikers, out there in the wilds of north west Scotland, they are all riding BMW GS bikes, and look like they are thoroughly enjoying the experience.Ewan and Charley are obviously great mates and they are tougher than you might imagine. They go through situations that most of us would have thrown in the towel. How many times can you lift a fully laden GS out of the deep and sucking mud before it starts getting a bit old?I was expecting them to be a bit precious, but as Claudio the cameraman said in one of the extra pieces, he was allowed to film when and what he wanted, so if Ewan was having a bad hair day, he wasn’t about to be a prima donna over it. So you get a warts and all view of it, even when they are trying new “recipes” with differing successes! They are just two really down to earth guys with no airs and graces, who obviously have no time for pretentiousness.In the places where the road ran out and there was no way around, they, and the support crew, if they were around, would come up with solutions to the problems, sometimes with the locals playing a part.There is a bit of everything in this documentary from male bonding and boys toys, to disasters, tears and joy, through discomfort, pre-packed camping meals and pain. The only negative was that Harley Davidsons were included!Well worth taking the time to watch this if you are interested in adventure travel especially centring around motorbikes. Don’t be surprised though if after watching it you start to look sidelong at the GS and wonder if you might just re-mortgage the house and go on your own little adventure, after all, Europe does look nice at this time of year. How about riding around Bavaria, then across to Vienna for a few days before going through the former Soviet states in Eastern Europe: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, keeping the Adriatic on your right until you roll into Greece? Then make your way across to Italy, someone has to sail across that gap surely, through France and Belgium then back home? Take 3 months to do it. Enjoy yourself. Just remember that you are a long time dead and why would you want to spend any more of your life stuck in the traffic on that hideous commute when you could be having a beer and a great meal in a restaurant alongside the Med?Get inspired - go somewhere

Happy with it

Great box set to keep any armchair adventurer entertained on a long wet weekend (or during another lockdown). Over ten episodes the series follows Ewan McGregor (without any Hollywood glitz and glamour) and his mate Charley Boorman on an epic motorbike journey from London through Europe, Northern Asia and North America to New York. I'm not a biker and for me it was the Asian locations like Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Siberia that enticed me to watch this, but I will say that I was enthralled with the entire series, right from the get go. I found even the first couple episodes that covered the preparations for the trip exciting.It's a real treat to see a Hollywood A-lister completely unplugged, so to speak, without make-up and genuinely struggling in conditions you'd expect Bear Grylls to call challenging. Both McGregor and Boorman come across as real regular guys and you can't help but root for them that they make it all the way to their final destination. While they had professional camera operators and a support crew following them, this is still very much a raw diary of an arduous journey, not a glossy TV show that looks like a series of high end travel commercials. Loved watching it.Picture and sound quality of the DVDs are good. English (and various other language) subtitles are available for those who may need them. Tiny criticism of the product design: all three discs look identical except for the labeling of disc/episode number which is incredibly small, in shiny silver lettering hardly more than a millimeter in size and almost impossible to decipher without the help of a magnifying glass.

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's 2004 ride from London to New York, via Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia and Alaska.While a lot of adventure bikers criticise them for enjoying the luxury of a support crew (just goes to show anyone can ride around the world when you have half a dozen people planning it for you and 2 four wheel drives to carry all the unpleasant luggage like food supplies, spare parts and tyres) their Long Way Round is full of good footage, at least as far as Magadan. Quite why they filled the remainder of the trip with visits to Orange County Choppers or horseriding in Montana is a bit beyond me, but does show what an anticlimax the trip was post Magadan.Adventure biking is still short of 'on the ground' video footage and is mostly documented by photographs and text. LWR thus builds on the pioneering work done by the British "Mondo Enduro" expedition of 1995/96 and "Terra Circa" from 2001 in bringing adventure motorcycling to the small screen. Whether you like the Long Way Round or not, one thing it has undeniably done is to boost the profile of adventure motorcycling dramatically. Due to the Long Way Round, people who know nothing about motorcycles get the concept of the long ride across the world. By targetting a mainstream audience, they have taken adventure motorcycling away from the just the bikers, and planted seeds across the broader community. I would estimate at least 1000 people cross Siberia on a motorcycle annually now, between May and September. It is unfortunate that they edited out all the meetings with other motorcycle travellers they met along the way, but if they showed how easy it was and how many people actually do this sort of thing then it would hardly make it look like a challenging adventure.If it is good production you are after in your adventure motorcycling, this is the number. If this whets your appetite for adventure motorcycling, try the Mondo Enduro or Terra Circa DVDs - the Long Way Round crew did while they were preparing their trip.

J'adore cette série que je regarde une fois l'an !!!

Gut anzuschauen....

Me ha gustado mucho, de hecho la única pega que puedo encontrar es que se hace corto y que echo de menos más información sobre las motos. Por ejemplo el mantenimiento que se les ha hecho, si llevan alguna preparación especial y otros temas similares.En cualquier caso la serie está muy bien y merece la pena verla.

bellissimo. lo consiglio a chi piace vedere il mondo e "fare strada". uno dei viaggi più belli che abbiano mai raccontato. dovrebbero fare una versione rimasterizzata ed "aggiustarlo" un po', ma va bene lo stesso.

このお値段で、いいのでしょうか？凄く得をした気持ちです。ありがとうございました。ただし商品説明にもありましたが、日本語版ではありません。了解した上で購入しました。