Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman Long Way Down

February 27, 9:24 PMDC Motorcycle Travel ExaminerMark Poesch

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In 2004 Ewan McGregor and his good friend Charley Boorman rode with their support team around the entire globe.  Their adventures are captured in the documentary and book Long Way Round.  In 2007, they jumped on their bikes to make the run from John o’ Groats in Scotland, through Europe and Africa all the way to Cape Agulhas in South Africa for Long Way Down.

Where the Long Way Round journey was an adventure of travel, people and cultures, and motorcycling, the Long Way Down takes on a more serious tone through the team's encounters with some of the harsh realities of travel through Africa.  Some, merely logistical (but potentially catastrophic to their travel plan), but others horrifyingly life-changing.

As described in the Wikipedia entry:

During the trip the pair visited three UNICEF facilities to raise awareness of the work done by the organisation. In Ethiopia they visited land mine awareness projects and met children who had been injured by mines. In Uganda they met former child soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army and saw the work being done to rehabilitate them. In Malawi they visited child care centres setup for children orphaned by AIDS. Both McGregor and Boorman had visited such centres in Africa before the trip.

Although the Long Way Round was not exactly always light-hearted, it never got into this sort of harsh reality.  Because of this, it’s hard to consider Long Way Down an "entertaining" adventure, but it is certainly one to watch, and as a documentary has an intrinsic value that goes far beyond what it had originally set out to accomplish.  This is reflected in the Netflix rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars from 4,797 viewers.

This really is a journey that can and should be appreciated by motorcyclists and non-motorcyclists alike.