Long Way Round

This is the kind of series you can watch over and over again (and I have). I bought the original 'normal version' when it first came out and wanted to instantly ride around the world. It's a travel programme of a different kind with humour and 'boys own' adventures as Ewan McGregor would say. His relationship with Charley Boorman is fantastic and the two, along with the support crew,have a great time travelling around the globe. The enormity of the task really comes home to both of them when they get to Mongolia and the tarmac road dissapear and are replaced by rough tracks, filled with holes or the rivers on the road of bones. With the support vehicles not too far away the pair are never that far away from danger but they are clearly miles ahead at times and in dodgy parts of the world. The scenes where they stay at the 'electrical salesmans' house is Russia is really funny especially after they have been tolt about the Russian Mafia! Ewan McGregors face is a picture as he realises where he is and who his host really is especially when he starts appearing with AK47's and other machine guns. Long Way Round is a top, top series carried out by two very likeable characters and on motorbikes, what more could you ask for? The Special Edition does have more scenes in and gives a grearter insight and if you enjoyed the first installment, you'll love this 10/10!

It's not often that a DVD is worth the money in terms of quality and quantity. However, the Long Way Round is a fabulous DVD containing all 7 episodes together with some intriguing extras. The series is well produced and compulsive viewing, even when watching all 7 episodes at one sitting. Ewan comes across as a very modest, down to earth person and Charlie has a wicked sense of humour. Together they make a great double act and play off against each other to great affect. Sure, the 2 guys have a full back up team and there is a third biker with them at all times, but this doesn't diminish the achievement of what they did. In some respects the other people add an extra dimension to the programme. The majority of the episodes focus on Ewan and Charlie and their travels. Most of the extras are fairly bog standard. However, there are 2 extras worth looking out for. Firstly there is a more in-depth mini-episode covering the first 5 days. These days were pretty much ignored in the original series so it's great so see some more footage from Western Europe. The second extra of note is the post trip interview. Ewan and Charlie are obviously great friends and guide us through some high and lows from the trip. All in all, an inspirational DVD. Especially to the wannabe world traveller. Watching this makes you just want to get out there and go to it.

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

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.

Turn up earlier than expected. In really good condition not a single scratch on any of the discs

This is brilliant. Let me outline the progress of the series; It starts with friends Ewan Mcgregor and Charley Boorman as they travel around the world on their trusty motorcycles, facing all kinds of obstacles in the way - from Bike ownership and sponsorship, to the travelling, sickness, missing family and accidents - and its these that make this documentary exciting, entertaining and very informative. Ewan and Charley make a great duo as they travel around the globe, and they learn alot of things that they teach us along the ay. You will see things in this documentary that are absurd and that you thought would never exit - a good example being a church in eastern Europe made completely from human bones. There is much more than this and it all adds up to a great adventure that men, bike lovers, documentary lovers and even women will thoroughly enjoy, and not just becasue of the Ewan Mcgregor eye candy. This story is inspirational and really makes you want to get out into the world and do a very similar thing - travelling, living and seeing unusual things. The story also hits a spot with the kindness and caring of the strangers that the duo meet on their adventure, from mob members to old people to crazy singers and dancers. This comes highly recommended and to be honest, I think its time you seen this if you haven't already. If you have, isn't it about time they released another one? Easily 5 stars! 5*****

My partner is a bike fanatic! I bought the DVD for him really, though i do like Ewan and his cheeky smile. I read the book while i was away at sea working, it was so hard to put the book down that i realised it had drawn me in to the touring biking world. So when i got home the DVD was ordered. As we dont really watch much TV we had never seen one episode. We sat down on a wet miserable Sunday as we could not go out on the Ducati and watched it from start to finish! I was hooked and wanted to go off touring on our bike. It was great to see the reality behind the glamour of touring, setting the whole trip up, the pit falls and the pleasures of every little moment. The excitment of Ewan and Charlie going on this epic journey seemed like so much fun, until reality hit them when they were on the road that they would not see their families for quite a long while. It showed total emotion from both of them as they got through each trial and tribulation that stood in there way of making the long way round.......... the hard way round. The problems with the camera man and his riding, eating of the testicles and the drinking of sour goats milk had me in fits of laughter eventually crying. This is a must for anyone who likes bikes and for those who do not, then it is still a must as it lets you into the world of biking and how hard it is.

Ich bin weiblich, aber (bislang) kein ausdrücklicher Fan von Ewan McGregor gewesen. Ein Schauspieler halt. Ach, und der ist mit dem Motorrad um die (halbe) Welt gefahren? Sicher mit allem Luxus, Masseur, Deluxe-Matratze und Koch etc. Nein, ich habe mich Gottseidank geirrt! Während andere hier das Begleitteam als "Luxus" bemängeln, finde ich sowohl die Vorbereitung als auch die Reise selbst recht vernünftig geplant und durchgeführt. Abenteuer und Belastungen verschiedenster Art gibt es - wie man sehen kann - auch so noch mehr als genug. Und abgesehen von den fantastischen Aufnahmen und Eindrücken, die man in dieser Doku vermittelt bekommt, ist es auch ein interessanter Einblick in die psychische Belastbarkeit eines bekannten - nice guy - Schauspielers: eben auch nur ein Mensch! Ich fahre selbst Motorrad, auch und vor allem in den Urlaub damit, gäbe sonst was dafür, wenn ich einen Sponsor und den Mut fände, auch mal so eine Reise zu machen. Hab auch schon jede Menge Bücher gelesen und Dokus gesehen, aber diese Doku ist mein absoluter Favorit, vielleicht auch gerade weil ich nix erwartet habe. Einzig schade, dass der westeuropäische Teil keine Rolle spielt, erst in Prag geht es (ein bisschen) los und dann so richtig in der Ukraine. Aber nach Tschechien und in die Slowakei fahr ich selbst, ist auch kein Abenteuer. Und dass dann der amerikanische Kontinent mit gut ausgebauten Highways keine großen Aufregungen bietet, war auch von vornherein klar. Aber der "Rest" ist wirklich spannend und fesselnd. Der Humor und auch eine Portion Eigenironie würzen das Ganze. Ich hab die Box gerade nochmals gekauft als Geschenk für einen ebenso Verrückten, der vermutlich danach die Landkarten auspacken wird ...

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.

I am obsessed with Ewan McGregor and everything he does, admittedly, but even if I weren't, this documentary series was absolutely fascinating! So much fun, drama, humanity, geography, sociology, getting to know the world and the people in it, beautiful, poignant moments, through struggles of epic proportions... Real 'what are you made of' kind of stuff. I have watched the whole series 3 times, and will watch it again for sure. Extremely compelling stuff.

Tout est parfait; depuis la preparation tres detaillée jusqu'aux peripeties du voyage; tres bien filmée et racontée. Les "acteurs" sont tres sympatiques et courageux: ce ne fut pas une promenade de santé...... Un tres beau temoignage donc sur une veritable epreuve mentale et sportive.à recommandé à tous les amateurs de raid extreme à moto.Ce déguste comme un film d'aventure!