Boorman takes the Long Way to New Zealand

Charley Boorman, British star of the highly-regarded documentary series The Long Way Round, is on a "flying" visit to New Zealand.

Among a busy media programme, he will make an appearance at this weekend’s Big Boys Toys - riding into the show on a BMW motorcycle.

Boorman (Excalibur, The Emerald Forest and Deliverance) and co-star Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting, Moulin Rouge, Star Wars) rode BMW bikes on their ambitious three month 32,000 km trek through some of the most inhospitable areas of the European continent and on to a finish in New York.

The concept for The Long Way Round grew out of an idea Boorman and McGregor hatched - to take their wives to Spain on their bikes, but this was a trip they intended to do when their children were older. McGregor couldn’t wait that long, bought a world map and spent an afternoon poring over it.

Plans were formed, daydreams quickly turned into reality and that evening he pitched the idea to Boorman of riding from London to New York the ‘long way round’.

Departing from London on 14th April 2004 the pair travelled through Europe, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada arriving in the USA just over three months later.

Along the way they encountered gangsters armed with AK47 Kalashnikov rifles, sampled some extreme “wild” cuisine, survived numerous motorised scrapes often while traversing non-existent roads days from the nearest hospital and on one occasion found themselves alarmingly close to a hungry grizzly bear.

They arrived at their final destination, New York, on 29th July.

Boorman’s New Zealand schedule has not been as testing. He has appeared at an exclusive event for BMW customers at Jerry Clayton BMW; carried out an intensive round of media interviews and on Tuesday enjoyed a day touring by motorcycle, heading out of Auckland to the Coromandel.

Predictably, he found New Zealand riding conditions “far better” than those the pair endured during the making of The Long Way Round.

The visit coincides with the release of a collectors’ edition three DVD of The Long Way Round which includes all ten episodes (New Zealand viewers only saw seven of the ten when it screened here) and many extra features including behind the scenes interviews with Boorman and McGregor.