NEW YORK (AP) — The last time Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman went on a motorcycle adventure, they rode cutting-edge, electric Harley-Davidsons. For their latest trip, they took a trip back in time.
The British best friends and actors chose to use vintage bikes this time as they ride through 17 European countries for Apple TV+‘s “Long Way Home,” the fourth installment of their popular road trip docuseries. It starts airing Friday.
McGregor picked a 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado, which was used as a patrol bike by the Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol. Boorman picked a rusted-out BMW R75/5 and scrambled to make it road worthy.
“I guess there’s just sort of nowhere else to go other than backwards,” says McGregor. “We felt that we hadn’t done a trip on old bikes. I’ve always loved old bikes.”
A trip to see their neighbors
The duo start at McGregor’s home in Scotland — they leave serenaded by a bagpipe band and, naturally, rain — into Holland, up through the Nordics, Arctic Circle, down to the Baltics before going through the Alps and France.
Unlike the Harleys or BMWs they’ve ridden before, using older bikes gave McGregor and Boorman a nostalgic feeling and something practical: The ability to get them back on the road should disaster strike.
“They’re fixable,” says McGregor. “At the side of the road, you can pretty much — with a bit of sandpaper and a screwdriver and a hammer — you could probably pretty much get them running again. Whereas with something like the electric bike, if something happens — if something goes wrong, as we learned in Central America — it’s catastrophic.”
Series highlights include the duo donning Viking costumes and axe throwing in Norway, camping at a windmill near Amsterdam and kayaking alongside a glacier in the Arctic Circle, “It’s so Mad Max everywhere” says McGregor beside the icy water.
The duo spend the longest day of the year on a beach with a bonfire on an island off the Norwegian coast, try logrolling in Finland, get tattoos in Poland, paraglide in the Alps and spend the night in the northern-most cabin in the world.
“One of the great things about it is seeing the planet that we live on off the back of a motorcycle when you’re sort of part of the environment. If it’s cold, you’re cold. If it’s wet, you’re wet. It’s a very real experience,” says McGregor.
They spent about two months on the road before finishing at Boorman’s home in England, taking time to enjoy the scenery more this time and reducing their speed.
“We were doing a loop of Europe. We weren’t covering days and days getting across far eastern Russia, where the landscape barely changes. On those BMWs, we could ride at 80 miles an hour, 90 miles an hour,” says McGregor. “We didn’t need to do that on this loop. So riding at 60, 65 is a nice speed to go at,” he adds.
Fourth time out there
The series marks the 20-year anniversary of the first series, 2004’s “Long Way Round,” which saw the pair drive from London through Europe, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America.
They also paired up in 2007 for “Long Way Down,” a 15,000-mile journey from Scotland to the southernmost tip of South Africa, and in 2019 for “Long Way Up” through 13 South and Central American countries.
This time, tents blow inside out and age takes its toll. “My arse is so numb, oh my gosh” says McGregor at one point. The food is not very fussy, ranging from Swedish seaweed gathered from the sea to a wheel of gouda in Amsterdam and packaged fish paste and crackers in the snow.
The irony this time was that while McGregor and Boorman were riding 50-year-old bikes, they and their team were using the latest technology — GPS, GoPros, drones and Insta360 cameras.
“You’re embracing these beautiful old motorcycles, but at the same time using whatever is around you to be able to enhance the story,” says Boorman.
“When we look back at the TV show, there were bits where I remember exactly where we were, but when you pull out with the drone, I didn’t realize there was a big river running beside us or a big mountain. So we get to experience a little bit as well. I like to embrace the technology.”
While it’s endlessly fun watching the duo banter while zooming through the landscape, there are moments more sobering, like when McGregor and Boorman visit UNICEF’s massive hub in Copenhagen and when they see for themselves the impact of global warming on glaciers.
McGregor, 54, who despite riding thousands of miles and seeing dozens of countries, suggests there’s still so much for he and Boorman to see.
“I always remind myself we’ve ridden around the world and up and down and sideways, but we only saw a couple of hundred yards from either side of our bike,” he says. “There’s a lot left to discover yet.”
