I don't resent them for being rich and famous and using this to live the dream of riding round the world. I resent them for being rich, and squandering this over an obsession with fame and image where they'd prioritise making ropey television shows over seeing and understanding the places they're privildged enough to get to visit.

Their television shows don't give us an insight into the places they travel through, and they don't show how easy it is and that anyone can experience it for themselves. Instead it's all about shameless self glorification. Barely more valid than claiming you shagged Ashley Cole to get your face on the front page of the Sun.

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UK to Mongolia 2009, on a DR350

£21....Now let me think :confused1:

thats a full tank of gas on my bike...or a night sat in front of CB and co...

I bet Austin would do a Talk and Clean my bike for £21


Dazzer

Hi Dazzer,

Austin would talk about it but what's the chance of him cleaning your bike when you look at his own machines eh!

Well ol Charlie and Ewan might be planning a West Africa trip!! speaking with an overland truck driver on the way down he said there LW team contacted the head office for route info.

That could be an interesting one on an overloaded 1200!

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http://www.travbuddy.com/mrduck
Don’t believe everything you hear! People love to tell a good story...

I was at a land rover garage last week and saw 3 newish 09 plated 110s for sale with longway up logos all over them with the words for sale due to not being required by production company as cancelled contract yours for £26k

these defenders were fully kitted and prepped for RTW or long distance... were also advertised in autotrader.....

Maybe they have changed their minds on using british support vehcles ?

I bet they will still have bmws.... Bet they wont do a ted simons and use triumph (more reliable than a bmw.... you will always find your way home..

They could try to impress us and go unsupported with only what they can carry and a cheap video camara

If they did ditch the support crews, fixers, armed guards, first aiders, mechanics, shoe lace repair specialist personal etc, they would earn a bit of respect in my eyes.

There's no reason it can't be just the three of them with Claudio doing all the film work. Stick Claudio in a beat up landie with maybe one kick ass ex SAS body guard for Ewan. Hell, they can even have a toolkit and beadbreaker on the landie.

I might even manage to sit through the first episode unlike the last one.

I think they have had a lot of stick from the non sunday biker motorcycle press. I remember Lois Pryces interview with Charlie in TBM which was hilarious. He was trying to pipe flowers up her arse and you could just see the expression on her face from the words in the magazine lol.

Maybe these experiences have persuaded them to stop being complete clueless tossers and see what the real deal is all about ! I'd have LOOOADS more fun watching them blast about Africa looking for a tyre shop or trying to organise DHL to ship in spare parts for their bikes !
I'd even watch a whole episode of "Ewan and Charlie try to fix their broken down BMW's"

THAT'S ADVENTURE !! Not "Today we're having a major problem in Africa today. One of the support crew stole my moisturiser"

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Just saw this, made me laugh…

YouTube - EWAN AND THINGY (EPISODE 1 of 9) PREPARATIONS

heheheehehee

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http://www.travbuddy.com/mrduck
Don’t believe everything you hear! People love to tell a good story...

Yeah... That's been floated around here a bit. Still makes me laugh everytime I watch it

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

AH AH AH!

This is awesome, I did not know it!

Thanks for posting it!

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Nick and his 2010 Yamaha XT1200Z Super Ténéré

Did I know just what I was starting with this thread. Anyhow since then I have signed uo for a GSa and have had to lose a loy of 'treats' to keep it. I still 'plan' the big one, and after a visit to Rivington Barn (those in N/w UK will know) I am still getting over the looks received (look at him posing stockbroker type) Well no, I am a struggling bulder who just wants the same as many here. Mrs B still not convinced that RTW is better than ROG (round our garden) , but shes going for CBT next saturday, so the seed is planted. I wiuld of course sell the 09 GSa and get a battered old 1150 if RTW becons. Stay the REET WAY UP . 9-). PS: anyone else find that damn organ music irritating on the HU videos. ????

Meh, I like Ewan and Charlie, they seem like good blokes and I like their show too.

Ok, that's it, I've had enough!

I am a 38 year old guy who has been adventuring all of my life. I have spent hundreds of nights in a tent and sleeping bag, many a night in temperatures way way way below freezing (think Canadian Rockies in the winter) in 10 feet of snow. I've slept on dirt, rocks, sand, concrete, grass, asphalt, ice, in snow caves and under the stars. I set out on a solo backpack trip around the world when I was ten days out of high school. I ski tour, surf, rock climb, mountaineer, windsurf, and paraglide.

But guess what??? Up until two years ago, I hadn't sat on a bike in 23 years. Other than the dirt bike that I caused hell on when I was a teenager, I hadn't been near a bike until I bought my 2009 F800GS. Not exactly the resume of a gnarly biking adventurer. Here's what will really piss off some of you; it's covered from front to back in Touratech stuff.

But guess what else; I don't give a s*** if that offends some of you. You know why? Because I have seen the big picture. When I was 21, I had a bad snowboard accident which put me in hospital for a couple of weeks. While I was recovering from open-heart surgery, they discovered that my kidneys had sh** the bed too. So two years later I was the very fortunate recipient of a brand new (to me) kidney. After 30 or so days in the hospital looking outside at the beautiful snow capped peaks of Vancouver's North Shore, I realized that any day outside of a hospital is a good one. This has been further demonstrated to me now that my wife and I have had to go through 9 years of fertility issues just to start a family. Oh ya, and did I forget to mention the nice sized tumour I had carved out of my neck a couple of years back (benign thankfully).

The fact is, I had been thinking of buying a bike since 1999 when my university buddy and I began dreaming of a ride from East to West across Russia. That never happened but thankfully I picked up a DVD at the checkout one day called Long Way Round. For years I had dreams of getting a bike but guess who pushed me over the edge and got me back out on a bike? None other than Ewan and Charley.

So there you go; I drive a super shiny, Touratech farkled F800GS that cost almost as much as my wife's car. It only has 10,000 km's on it so far. I doubt I've been farther than 500 km's from my front door (we are incredibly fortunate to now have a four year old daughter and so I end up spending a lot more time with her than I do riding my bike). But that doesn't mean I couldn't go further if I chose to. I live for dirt roads and trails. I know for a fact that I could go around the world on my ride and have a hell of a good time doing so. Because of the fact that I've been shown just how bloody lucky some of us are to have the ability to even dream of such a trip I wouldn't take so much as one second to worry about what somebody thought of my GS. I'd just be riding along with a grin as wide as China knowing that I was privileged enough to have the ability to follow my dreams and see the world. I spend a great deal of time thinking about all those people who don't have the good health and fortune to consider a trip around the block on a bike let alone a trip around the world.

I feel I've earned the right to ride whatever the hell kind of bike I want. And I'll put whatever the hell I want on it too, regardless of whether or not that "dilutes" it for the hard core set that have had bikes since the earth was still round. Riding a "Brand X" 250 in nothing but a K-way jacket and a pair of worn out blunnies all the way from Oxford Street to Tunisia is not the only way to learn how to be an adventurer. Life has a way of teaching some of us the hard way... others just have to spend time worrying about how gnarly they are compared to that guy with the shiny new bike he bought after watching Long Way Round.

Ben

You have indeed.

No problem with that. The problem starts when some kid starts asking about how you get into this. If you hand him the TT book and tell him to go spend £30000 you are a muppet. If you tell him to get his CG125 into tip top condition and see how far he can get before his student loan runs out, that IMHO is more like it, especially if you help him build a rack to keep the ex-army panniers out of the back wheel. It's years, petrol and tyres that make for easy trips to interesting places, not a shopping trip. That's the problem with E&C and the dress up brigade they've spawned IMHO. If you are doing rather than playing and find the TT stuff works, go for it, but for every one like you we now have 9 stockbrokers who look the same but would get a nose bleed if they had a puncture in Islington and will just keep passing on the catalogue.

It's become very much like the difference between guys who took an ex-army Harley and lightened it and some of the current generation who bought a Dyna-super-extra-chop-glide from a place that called itself a boutique.

If you are a rider not a shopper you shouldn't worry about it.

Andy

Time to right a book? Sounds like you've had a pretty interesting life Ben.

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TurboCharger + Francois (our BMW R1200gs) '07
www.riding2up.net, blog.riding2up.net