We chat to legend Charley Boorman in Austria to discuss his new Apple TV+ series Long Way Home, revisiting old bikes, overcoming injuries, and living a lifetime on two wheels...
Charley Boorman is back with the fourth instalment of the ‘Long Way’ series, Long Way Home. Available via Apple TV+, it shows the preparation and experiences Boorman and Ewan McGregor had riding old bikes from the UK, around lots of Europe, and back.
BikeReview caught up with Charley in Austria, where he was a guest of Edelweiss Bike Travel.
“Long Way Home is our latest one with Apple TV+. It’s our second project with them. The first was “Long Way Up” with electric motorcycles, which was interesting because we started speaking to Apple when they’d only just launched their platform. We were the third TV show commissioned, so by the time it came out there wasn’t much else on the platform. It was tricky to get people to watch because, you know, paying for a service with limited content. Now, a few years later, it’s become quite a big platform and they’re a nice company to work with.
Read Nigel Patterson’s other features here…
“Long Way Home was born from Long Way Up because toward the end of that trip, you always start talking about another ride so you don’t feel so bad about stopping the current one. We started fantasising about old bikes because the electric bikes were an amazing but really difficult adventure. No one had ever done that distance before on electric motorcycles. Even people building electric cars were saying they didn’t think we’d make it.bWe thought, let’s do something closer to home on old bikes. I do motorcycle tours in Australia, and about 60-70 per cent of the people on those tours are Australians who’ve never been to Tasmania. People don’t often travel in their own backyard.
“Ewan had his Moto Guzzi anyway – he loves them. I bought a BMW R75/5 from 1973. The idea was that you could fix these bikes yourself, and if you can’t, there’s always somebody who will help. When you break down on a motorcycle, everybody stops to ask if you’re okay. If you break down in a car, not a single person will stop. We knew the adventure would be having only an 80 per cent chance of getting where you want to go. It’s never really what you expect. Some people plan trips to the nth degree, booking all their hotels in advance. Others do it differently – there’s no wrong way, just your way. Some purists never organize anything, and that’s fine. I think the minimum you should do is look at what you want to do in each country, choose certain things you really want to see, and let that determine your route. Then between those points, you just do whatever you want”.
“For example, we did snowmobile watercross – snowmobiles racing on water with a motocross track. If you lose momentum, the machine sinks to the bottom of the lake. These events happen on specific days, so you have to be there then. But otherwise, if someone says you’ve got to see something, you go see it. What’s amazing these days is the technology – you can look on Google Maps, hover over an area where you want to stay, and hotels, B&Bs, and all sorts of places pop up. You can see their availability and prices. When we went to Norway, we’d start off and by lunchtime think about where to head for the night. We’d find these quirky little places to stay – it was fantastic”.
The conversation then moved to the present, and why we were both sitting in a hotel in Austria with spectacular mountain views.
“I’m here because of Tobias, or Toby, who runs Edelweiss Bike Travel. He’s a friend I met through ACT – Adventure Country Tracks. In Europe, you can go to their website and download tracks for adventure motorbikes. They’re off-road and on-road routes through places you’d probably never find otherwise. If you came to Croatia looking for nice off-road routes, you could download the tracks and run them.
Toby invited me to come along for their 45th anniversary, so I said yeah and came to say hi”.
Boorman has been involved in taking people touring with Aussie company Compass Expeditions, including the one through Tasmania already mentioned above.
“We do one in Africa – Southern Africa – going from Cape Town to Victoria Falls through South Africa, maybe Botswana, Zimbabwe, ending up at Victoria Falls Hotel. It’s 16 days and we stay in the most beautiful lodges. When they build hotels in Africa, they’re unbelievably exquisite. You sit in these beautiful private huts with tiny plunge pools overlooking watering holes, watching elephants, zebras, giraffes, elands, and kudus while having a sundowner cocktail. Sometimes you have to stop because 40 or 50 elephants are crossing the road. At first everyone thinks it’s amazing, but by day 10 they’re going, “Not more elephants!” and getting frustrated waiting 15 minutes for them to cross”.
“I started those tours because when you say you’re going to Cape Town or Kenya, people see Africa as just one country. But it’s an extraordinary continent, much bigger than it looks on maps. Culturally, North Africa is very much Muslim and Arabic, part of the Middle East sphere. Central Africa around Lake Victoria is the real heart of Africa. Southern Africa is totally different again.
“It’s the only continent left in the world where there are still animals. You get bears in North America and wallabies in Australia, but everything else that was there is gone. When you sit on your motorbike waiting for 40 elephants to cross, it’s pretty amazing. Or you’re riding along and suddenly an ostrich is running beside you, speeding up when you speed up, slowing down when you slow down. Ostrich meat is incredible, by the way – it’s dark meat, more like steak. You have to eat it medium rare”.
Jeff with Alan Cathcart and Freddie Spencer at Bike Shed L.A, which is part owned by Charlie, drop in there for a beer!
Boorman’s looking lean and healthy during this interview, something that was not guaranteed after some nasty crashes in the past.
“In 2016, I destroyed my legs in Portugal. I was launching the Triumph Tiger 1200, entertaining the world’s press, when I hit a bollard and destroyed my legs. One of the senior guys from Triumph was standing over me – my leg was pointing in the wrong direction with bones sticking out – and he said, ‘You’ve got one thing going for you, Charlie. You’re the first person to write off a Tiger 1200, and you’ve really done it well. You’ve broken it into three pieces and it took us an hour and a half to find the back wheel.’ “That was 26 operations to walk again. It took a long time”…
“I started on motocross when I was a kid and have broken bones all my life, but I always want to get back on the bike”…
“Just as I was getting back and riding again, doing a tour in Africa in 2018, I had another massive crash. I don’t remember it. I broke all the ribs on my left side, collapsed lung, broken collarbone, snapped my forearm in half with bones coming out. I broke my pelvis, and that was all plated. My arm was plated, collarbone plated. Then massive head injury, brain bleed, brain swelling, and multiple fractures all over my head. They found me and I’d stopped breathing. Luckily, I was on my motorcycle tour and we always carry a medic. They jumped out and got me going again.
“We were negotiating for Long Way Up at the time, and Apple kept saying they’d love to get Ewan and me together. I’m lying in bed with a broken pelvis, having just had an operation to put myself back together, and if they saw me the way I was then, they would never have believed I’d get back to it riding. That’s why on Long Way Up Ewan was so worried – it was still fresh.”
Boorman doesn’t really feel he had a lot of choice but to get back on a bike though, even after such injuries.
“The thing is, there isn’t anything else I can do. I didn’t really have much choice but to get back on a motorcycle. Look at people who do horse riding – ask any of them and they’ve all broken bones and had big injuries, but they all seem to get back on the horse. I started on motocross when I was a kid and have broken bones all my life, but I always want to get back on the bike. That was my focus and what got me through everything. I remember waking up after the leg surgery. I broke my hand too – I was wearing gloves with hard plastic armoured knuckles and the edge of the hard knuckle broke all the bones across my hand when I hit the ground. I don’t wear those hard knuckle protectors anymore because the edge is what broke my hand”.
“There was never a thought of not getting back on. I remember getting back on the bike when I still had the cage around my leg and couldn’t quite walk properly on my right leg. With both legs broken, I was in bed for three or four months. I had this big cage around my leg, and my wife has a little scooter. I thought I couldn’t ride the motorbike because the cage wouldn’t let me change gear, so I considered extending the gear lever with copper pipe. But I thought the bike was too heavy and my leg wasn’t stable enough. So I snuck out with the scooter. I remember going along the road and everybody was overtaking me. I realised I was only doing about 10 miles an hour, but all the information was coming too fast. I came back and my wife and daughter were standing by the front door asking what I was doing!
“Before that, I was in a wheelchair and thought I could drive the car. I got into the car with two broken legs – it was automatic so I could drive with my right foot. I drove around thinking this was brilliant, but when I came back, someone had parked where my wheelchair was. I was stuck outside the house without my phone, so I leaned on the horn until my wife came out!”
“I did the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride in 2017 when I had the cage. I was on one of those two-wheel front scooters where you could press a button to keep you upright. This guy came up beside me and said, “Charlie, that’s not the right bike for this ride.” I opened the blanket covering my legs, and he saw my shorts and the huge cage. He just went, “Oh God, sorry, sorry!” and rode off. I remember waking up after the brutal surgery. Your first instinct after a crash is to get up, pick up the bike, and pretend nothing happened. When your friends come by, you act like there was no crash. I went to stand up after the crash on the Triumph and walk, then realised the bottom of my leg was broken.
“I woke up in the morning and all three limbs had severe surgery. I was starting to drop into despair when I realised I was sharing the room with another guy who was in much worse shape than me. I looked over at him, then at myself, and started to laugh. I started to feel quite cheery, thinking this actually wasn’t so bad. From that point on, I was fine”.
“Over time, surgeons become immune to what they’re doing and assume you know as much as they do. I explain to people that the realistic process is much longer than they think.”
“I think it’s very important – I speak to lots of people who have big injuries now because doctors and nurses don’t explain what’s going to happen afterward. The surgeon will say you’ll be walking in a couple of weeks, but it’s just not true. Over time, surgeons become immune to what they’re doing and assume you know as much as they do. I explain to people that the realistic process is much longer than they think. I used to get electric shocks down my legs and had no idea what that was. Apparently it’s quite normal – it’s your nerve endings moving again”.
“I’m lucky enough to realise that a lot of people can get stuck in the trauma and can’t get past it. Their life becomes defined by that accident or trauma, whether physical or mental. I remember lying there thinking, if I’d just left the hotel a minute later, it wouldn’t have happened because the car wouldn’t have been where it was. But you can’t change it. There’s no point wasting time on it. It’s like all the mistakes we make in life, the wrong decisions about work – you can’t change it. You can try to do something about it, but you can’t change it. I learned that early on.”
Something you might not know about Boorman is his passion for cooking – he actually finished equal second on reality show Celebrity Masterchef.
“I’ve always loved cooking. My mother was an amazing cook from North Germany – really butter and cream cooking, which is my favorite. The idea of cooking for people is something I really love. We were always entertaining at home with lots of people. I own part of a restaurant called Bike Shed in London – it’s a real hipster, cool place with a restaurant, apparel shop, barber shop, and tattoo parlor. We have one in Los Angeles and we’re about to open one in Dubai. I used to go up there on the scooter when I was still really weak and couldn’t get it onto the centrestand. I’d call ahead and say I’d be there in 40 minutes, asking them to keep an eye out. A waiter would come running out like I was Valentino Rossi, holding the bike like he’s pit crew while I got off with my crutches.
“I did Celebrity MasterChef in the UK a few years ago with Jody Kidd, who was a supermodel and races cars, and Emma Thompson, the wonderful actress. We were in the final three, and I was looking at what the girls were cooking. Emma was cooking up this storm, and I said to Jody, ‘We’re cooked. We’re done.’ Her station was always chaotic, but when she looked at Emma’s work, she said, “Oh my God,” and we both knew we’d lost….
Long Way Home Official Trailer | Apple TV
While most of us will have followed Boorman’s life through the TV, he’s now popping up on social media, where he sees a big future.
“I do a lot of Instagram and I’ve got this new YouTube channel – just Charlie Boorman, keeping it simple. I’m doing motorcycle reviews on my channel. I’ve got a TV show I’m doing to do straight to YouTube. It’s cooking, motorcycling, and people. The new show will be coming out in this year on YouTube – cooking, bikes, people, and stuff like that. Keep an eye on my Instagram; that’s usually where most of my information goes”…
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