McGregor and Boorman finish Long Way Down
Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman in the Long Way Down
Monday, 06, Aug 2007 03:05
Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman have completed their epic motorcycle journey through Europe and Africa.
The Long Way Down will be broadcast on BBC2 during the autumn and follows the two actors on their 15,000-mile journey from John O'Groats to Cape Town.
The motorcycle trip took three months and included stop-offs in Libya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Rwanda.
Both McGregor and Boorman aimed to take in the less travelled parts of Africa, such as the region near the Eritrean border and Gulu in northern Uganda.
"The Long Way Down has been an amazing journey and it has been a real privilege to be able to experience these diverse and beautiful places," McGregor said.
"We've had the opportunity to see such different ways of life to ours and have travelled to remote places very few people have access to. The sense of freedom and exploration has been incredible."
The Long Way Down follows on from Long Way Round, the 20,000-mile ride from London to New York in 2004.
On that expedition the actors took in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and far-eastern Russia.
During the Africa trip, McGregor and Boorman visited sites linked to charities they support, including Unicef.
Boorman added: "I think that when we finished Long Way Round, Ewan and I we went back to our offices and Ewan and I had already pulled out a map of Africa, so I think we'd kind of already decided before we came back from our trip that we were going to do Africa.
"It's been great, but I'm starting to worry about stopping it, you know, because our life for the last 12 weeks has been just riding the bikes, watching the landscape change around us, and meeting people, and doing amazing things, and it's going to stop."