Charley Boorman

Great book. This book is not necessarily all about the bikes and blokes that ride them, but it is more about the places, the people, and the moments. Ewan and Charlie travel through some of the most remote and poorest regions of the world, but wherever they go, the people are gracious and kind, offering what little they have, including food, liquor, and shelter.

Ewan rarely plays his "Obi-Wan" card - only when it's a must. For most of the journey people have no idea who he is. He is just a show more guy riding through occasionally in need of help and often needing a place to stay and a meal.

As the guys travel through Kazakhstan, Serbia, Russia, and Mongolia, they realize it's not about getting from one point to the next, but about all those moments in between.

Really well written in alternating voices of Ewan and Charlie. Just a great book! show less

Unfortunately too many years have passed since I watched the Long Way Round docuseries to say whether or not this book offered anything new. I will say I probably enjoyed the docuseries more as the distinctions between Ewan and Charley’s personalities are more apparent on television and obviously there’s the visual component. That said though, this book is still worth reading if you enjoy either actor or crave a vicarious road trip.

The book switches back and forth from Ewan and show more Charley’s points of view, indicating who is speaking at the start of each segment. I have no doubt that these accounts of the trip came from Ewan and Charley, it’s just that the editor or whoever went through and polished things up polished them so thoroughly that Ewan and Charley’s “voices” as well as the few snippets of dialogue often sounded too similar. While Ewan and Charley share similarities like choice of profession, love of motorcycles, etc, I do think they are probably more distinguishable from one another than it tended to feel here.

Like I mentioned it’s been a long time since I watched the television series of this trip, so I also don’t recall whether Ewan and Charley’s whining felt as prominent on TV as it does in this book. During their most recent docuseries trip, maybe because they’re older, they seemed more laid back about things than they do here. There really is a tremendous amount of complaining here for two people who are being paid to go on dream vacation. Sometimes I was like, well, we’re all occasionally guilty of whining about things that aren’t really worth whining over, it’s human, and good for them that they’re willing to include that flawed side of themselves here rather than presenting as perfect, but other times it just really got on my nerves since like I said, they were being paid to go on a dream vacation.

The content of the trip itself, the countries they visit that aren’t places often visited or documented, issues with the bikes, the moments where they reluctantly place their trust in strangers, it’s all interesting stuff, but I think it could have been that much better, had the book gone with slightly different formatting. As is too often the case with many books, there are photo sections rather than interspersing them throughout the book where they could have actually lined up with the timeline of the trip. It also seemed that the appendix in the back thoroughly detailing dates and destinations was so wasted there when I would have appreciated such specific details throughout the book where the sense of time in relation to place was often more vague than I would have preferred. show less

I first came across Charley Boorman when he appeared on our screens with Euan MacGregor in their epic travel adventure Long Way Round where they rode motorbikes from London to New York via Russia. Since then I have watched and read about all his travels and adventures all around the planet all through Africa and racing from Paris to Dakar. All of these have involved motorbikes to a greater or lesser degree. He was employed by Triumph to be an ambassador for them and involved in promoting show more their bikes. He was whisked off to Portugal to ride and be involved in the launch of the new Tiger Explorer when he was involved in an accident between a Mercedes and a wall. The impact broke his right ankle and smashed his fibia and tibia in his left leg. The damage was so severe that no one knew if he would lose his leg, let alone know if he would be able to walk or ride his beloved motorbikes once again.

From this dramatic and frankly traumatic start, Charley tells us the story of his long road to recovery. He does not hold much back telling you about his injuries, the number of operations and dealing with all the medical professionals for each of his injuries. He uses his time while recovering to look back on his childhood memories; his earliest moments spent on two wheels, to those significant moments that his father arranged which helped kickstart his career on the screen. After the accident, he had to cancel numerous events and he relives the time he has spent on motorbikes heading around the world on various escapades with the wonder if will ever be able to do it again.

I have been a fan of Boorman for a number of years now, he comes across as a genuinely good guy with as much as a sense of adventure as fun. He writes in a chatty style and is always honest about how he is feeling from the lowest moments and fears to the high points. He is eager to get better, and even while in a cast manages to get himself into scrapes still. Definitely a book for his fans, but there is enough in here to keep most people interested. There was a tantalising hint of a new adventure too; I hope that they do it. show less

It is worth remembering in reading this book that it is marketed alongside a DVD and a T-shirt because one has the impression that it is more or less a "word dump", i.e. that Charley and his mates recorded their stories, then passed them along to ghost writer Robert Uhlig to craft something serviceable. Uhlig did create a book that reads reasonably well, though it helped that the engine driving the book is this insanely frantic race, "the Dakar". Despite the book's modest ambitions and the show more fact that it is basically an enjoyable read, there is the problem that one can learn more about the Dakar from a glance at wikipedia than from Race to Dakar's almost 300 pages. Would it have killed them to do some research and to interweave the result into this tale of endless bike spills and equipment malfunctions? Yes it has to be about these details but without some larger exposition and narrative it can read like just so much sound and fury. Boorman and his team made an extraordinary effort to get to Dakar. With a fraction of that effort they could have made this more than the literary equivalent of a T-shirt. show less