Long Way Down (2007) s01e10 Episode Script

1
Back in 2004,
my friend Charley Boorman and I
rode from London round to New York, east.
And we called the trip the Long Way Round.
We did it! New York!
It's Ewan and I living out a dream
on motorbikes.
Shortly after we got back,
we decided it was definitely something
that we wanted to do again.
We started talking about Africa.
And we're calling this trip Long Way Down.
We're gonna ride 15,000 miles
through 18 countries.
From John O'Groats,
through Europe and into Africa.
Across Libya to Egypt,
following the Nile south into the Sudan.
Crossing the equator
and over to the Skeleton Coast.
Arriving in Cape Town 85 days later.
We're gonna give these guys video cameras,
and they'll also have cameras
with microphones on their crash helmets,
so they can film as they're riding along.
There's a bit of tarmac. Look at that!
A third motorcycle will travel with them,
and on that motorcycle will be Claudio,
a cameraman.
In addition, Russ and I will travel in
two 4x4s with Jimmy, another cameraman,
Dai, our medic, and Jim,
a cameraman who will help with security.
We'll be filming the guys
from the vehicles,
linking up with them at borders.
But otherwise,
the motorcycles will be on their own.
Got sun on my face ♪
Sleeping rough on the road ♪
I'll tell you all about it ♪
When I get home ♪
Comin' round to meet you ♪
The long way down ♪
Every day that passed
for the last two weeks
I was thinking, "Oh, no!
It's gonna end soon,"
'cause I love it and it's been
the most extraordinary experience.
- You ready for the morning?
- Yeah.
It's about six in the morning,
and Charley, myself, David
have all decided
to go out into the game park and see if
we can see some more beautiful wildlife.
We like to coordinate our look.
And today because we were gonna be
in mainly beige yellow,
we thought we'd wear a nice dark green.
- Are you saying it doesn't work?
- No, perfect.
- Does it clash with my eyes?
- Brings your eyes out, actually. Bing!
- Bing!
- Yeah, nice.
We have located a wild dog den.
The most endangered species probably
in southern Africa here.
And hopefully we're gonna see
the puppies coming out from the den.
See the puppies coming back?
This is probably the most successful
dog species, the African hunting dog.
I felt they have
a little bit of an Alsatian-looking face
and more of a greyhound kind of body.
'Cause they're very fast,
very thin long legs. Extremely fast.
But they have the most beautiful markings,
really good camouflage sort of markings.
He didn't have any clue that we're here.
Because he just, sort of,
saw this frame as a huge thing.
Until I get my ignition on,
and that's when he knew that we're there,
and he suddenly flipped up, you know,
he got a fright.
It gives you an impression
of how bad eyesight they actually have.
We saw some elephants and we saw
some kudu. You just name it, we saw it.
- It sort of does the Egyptian walk.
- Egyptian walk.
Yeah, with that head, doesn't it?
Oh, wow! Oh, that's impressive, isn't it?
- Beautiful!
- Look at the end one.
Did you know that elephants
literally almost never sleep?
They're so big, that they basically,
just day and night, constantly eat.
So that they only catch little power naps
every so often.
I was going back to my room,
here in the Okavango Delta.
Quite amazing privilege
to be so close to these amazing animals.
They're very shortsighted, elephants.
But they have very good hearing, obviously
because they've got such big ears.
And also very good smell, sense of smell.
Which you can tell because they've got
very big noses.
Anyway, I got quite close to him,
and I was filming me
and him over my shoulder,
and then he started to smell me
and I thought, "Okay,
he's smelling me now, I'll back off."
So I think I'm gonna edge away now
before I chance my luck too much.
But as I started to back off,
he started to walk towards me
and his ears came up
and he seemed to get bigger.
And then I stopped behind a tree.
Shit!
What was I doing hiding behind a tree
from an elephant?
And then I did start moving again,
and he made
the most God almighty trumpeting noise.
And it's primeval fear I felt.
Fucking hell, fuck!
Fear from a very ancient place
in my psyche.
And I ran up to my room.
It was terrifying.
I consider myself really stupid
for having put myself in a situation
with a huge wild animal.
'Cause it could easily have turned
into something a bit nasty,
and I would really
only have myself to blame.
So what you've got to do
if you're ever approached by an elephant,
if it starts coming at you like that,
it's what they call a false charge,
hopefully.
What you're gonna do is stand your ground
and make yourself very big
and shout and make yourself big and noisy,
but don't move.
And then he'll stop, and he'll think,
"Well, I don't know
why that thing's not moving,"
and then he'll go away.
Unless it's a real charge,
in which case, you'll be dead.
Then we went off on a beautiful
canoe ride over the delta here
and saw some hippopotamuses.
There's some hippos just over there.
You can hear them, quite loud.
We've just had
the most extraordinary time.
Then we came back
and we did a night safari.
We went over to this hide
where they have some hyenas.
Just find it really exciting
to actually see a hyena for real.
It's crazy.
So, we've heard a distress call,
apparently of a buffalo,
and Doctor reckons that it could be
you know, being attacked by lions.
So we're on our way to potentially,
fingers crossed, see something remarkable.
But it was good fun.
It was really exciting racing,
trying to find this thing,
and stopping and listening and hearing.
And we ended up in this huge buffalo herd.
And eventually we came round to this thing
and they were shining the torch
and they go, "Look, it's a wildcat."
Just over here, we found our cat.
Yeah, I got it here, it's fine.
And it came to this shot
of this domestic kitten.
- Cleaning itself.
- Terrifying.
Terrifying animal.
So we just got back
from the Okavango Delta,
which was absolutely beautiful.
So, a couple of glorious days,
and back in the saddle.
I must say, I'm quite excited.
Where there's a sand road.
We're about ten days away from the end.
And I'm really split about it, you know?
I can't wait to get back
to being with my family,
at the same time, I don't want to stop
traveling through Africa. I love it.
Feels like the right thing to be doing.
So, we've arrived at the road.
And along here is probably the last
very difficult section of the whole trip.
About 120 Ks,
and I think it progressively gets worse.
I really am looking forward to the sand.
Those guys were off bikes
for a day and a half, and I think
they're keen to tackle
whatever comes their way.
And this is gonna be hard-core.
We've got a couple of hours
of light to just do this first bit.
So we're coming along, very nice,
hard-packed and then suddenly,
"Uh-oh!"
I'm proud to accept the award
for the first tumble
of the difficult road to Namibia.
- Our old friend soft sand.
- Sand.
Well, there's 120 kilometers of this road,
and I think we've probably done ten?
One hundred and ten kilometers to go.
It felt like we were on the bad stuff
for quite a long time.
I thought at least maybe 15 miles,
and it turns out that the actual bad bit
of road that we've been on,
we've been on for five miles.
It does play with your mind like that
'cause it all takes so much longer.
It's a great One of our favorite lines.
In a film I haven't seen for many years
called White Mischief
where Sarah Miles stands on the balcony,
she looks out with a gin and tonic,
she goes,
"Another fucking perfect African sunset."
That's a great line.
I mean, it's a great line.
It's weird.
I don't want to stop the journey
but I'm very happy
to get back to my kids, Eve.
I'm so accustomed to just riding my bike
through Africa, you know?
I remember,
we spoke about this on the last one.
There are no responsibilities, you know?
- Yeah.
- It's just you
and getting yourself through the day.
That's a nice luxury, you know?
I'm looking forward to today to really
having a good old push on the bikes.
This is Obi-Wan Kenobi doing a moo noise.
Moo, moo.
We're traveling down this road
from Nokaneng
in Botswana down a sand road
all the way over to the Namibian border.
Whoa, whoa.
Soft sand, big old bike,
not a great combination.
We all just thought that, look, we're
getting towards the end of the journey,
and there was certainly room
for one last challenge.
And so, we gave it a go and we did,
we got through it, you know?
And, onto the harder ground!
Lovely jubbly.
So, next stop, Namibia.
Here we are. Now this is a border.
Then we cross this tiny, little border
in the middle of nowhere,
really a funny, little border crossing,
and our second last one, as well.
Very nice.
- You like that?
- Very nice.
- This is my wife's name, Eve
- Okay.
and then my kids, my three kids.
All right.
Do you know
what the road is like over there?
- Here? It's gravel.
- Gravel?
- It's a good road?
- Good road.
- All the way?
- Yeah, all the way.
Hey!
See you later, guys.
Side by side every step of the way ♪
Bye.
I like it here.
I like it, Namibia.
Yeah, come on.
Ultimately, we're all aiming
to go to the Skeleton Coast,
but we split from them last night.
We might not see the boys again
until the border with South Africa.
So I hope they stay safe
because this is really the last run,
the home stretch.
A very long gravel road.
Jesus. Still on it. It's 12:00 now.
Next turn, 83 miles.
We've just realized
that we haven't got enough petrol.
That's the thing here in Namibia, is that
in between the towns, there's nothing.
Really is nothing.
Well, you got lucky
on the fuel again. Just about.
It's a lovely feeling having fuel
pumped into your bike
knowing that you can do
at least 250 miles.
It's a good feeling, that.
That was close.
That's the closest we've got
to not having enough petrol
or running out of petrol.
It's like a mini Ayers Rock really,
isn't it, you know?
The plan is to go and find
a bush village
and see if we can camp
with the bush people tonight.
Watch some dancing
and join in on the merriment.
These guys have been in Namibia
for about 30,000 years.
Cool, eh?
That's beautiful, look at that.
Isn't that lovely? The dust and the sun.
I feel like I'm kind of floating.
So, we found a village of the bush people,
and this is our friend Ali,
who's gonna take us to meet the chief,
the head man, and ask him his permission
if we can put our tents here
under this tree under the moon.
Right.
Chief.
- Ah, this man here? Wow.
- Ah, this is the chief.
- Hello.
- Hello.
Nice to meet you. Good to see you.
- Hello, sir. Nice to meet you.
- Hello, hello.
It's an amazing language, isn't it?
I've never heard it in real life.
It's beautiful.
Okay.
Kind of all having a chat
about it, everybody.
We need the young man to translate for us.
No, it's very simple. He's saying, "Pay us
the money and we'll do whatever you want."
Oh, and a dance, maybe.
Yeah, a dance would be great.
Ah, yeah. That'd be fantastic.
They go
Like that kind of, sort of thing.
And it's just beautiful to listen to.
And you just get mesmerized by it.
What I really find fantastic is,
you know, arriving in Namibia first night,
and we're here with the bushmen
- Yeah.
- Actually, no, what did he call them?
I can't remember now.
It had a in it.
- No, but I get a real sense of
- Yeah, yeah.
- you know, home, wife.
- Not long now, mate.
Seven days today.
Sat down in this circle.
They built this fire
and the men sat on one side
and the women stood on the other.
And then they started singing
these just beautiful songs.
There was someone ill in the village so
they started healing him in front of us.
Mad healing him.
They almost seemed to get possessed.
It's just beautiful to watch.
Well, whatever it was they did to him,
it seems to have done the job.
I must say, I'm really getting excited
about seeing Olly and the kids.
I'm sadder and sadder
about this journey ending
because I'm really in it now, and on it.
I really feel like I'm in the journey,
and I'm not concerned
about stopping anywhere
and camping anywhere.
It's just lovely to be in that sort of
But it does take a long time
to get into that feeling.
What do you think?
Do you like my hair like this today?
- It's interesting, isn't it?
- It's definitely
- hedgehog-like.
- It's a whole new look.
It's kind of the porcupine look.
Here's to a lovely day in the saddle,
because there's not many left now
before we arrive into Cape Town.
Touch wood.
Look at this place.
Phenomenal.
We're gonna try
and do a big, big push today
to try and get as close
to the Skeleton Coast as possible.
I think about Scotland and England
and France and Italy and Sicily
and it all seems like a very long, long,
long, long, long time ago.
Maybe we took a wrong turning
and we've ended up on Mars.
Look where we are, it's amazing!
Wow. Wow!
4:20 p.m., good time to camp.
I like it here.
Charley, this is fucking lovely back here.
There's a tree and some sand.
I don't want this trip to end.
We got here a half a day early
so we thought we'd be a bit more
adventurous on the Skeleton Coast.
Ten minutes into it, Russ said,
"Maybe we shouldn't both go
'cause we'll both get stuck."
I said, "We won't both get stuck."
Fifteen minutes later
Hold it.
Just attaching those
to the chassis of the car.
If you leave the engine running,
we'll keep it
And then that's attached to our winch.
Okay, just take up the slack for me.
Okay, you're gonna drive it a little bit?
No, we'll just pull it initially
- to get it out of the big hole.
- Okay.
Oh, my God.
All right, let's do this
before the sun goes down, huh?
Okay, gently, that's it.
Keep coming. Gently does it.
Switch it.
- Come on!
- Keep going.
- Stop!
- Should I give it a little power?
- What do you think? No?
- Stop now. Stop.
Stop, stop!
We can't get both of these things
stuck here. There is nothing.
There is nothing around to pull us out.
It's absolutely still and quiet.
There's a little breeze.
It's phenomenal.
I think in many ways it was
maybe the most beautiful camping spot
that we'd ever stayed at.
It was absolutely exquisite.
I'd like to come here, make a camp,
and stay here for a week,
just with some good books.
And I could feel time running out.
All this time I could feel
time kinda running out.
- One, two, three.
- Ease it and then go for it. Go.
Push! Push!
And drive it, hey, go!
We're not beaten by the Skeleton Coast.
We were about to be two wrecks.
It's six o' clock in the morning,
and they're still asleep.
And the moon is full, and it's so bright.
The sunrise is coming up behind me
and it's beautiful.
It's just beautiful here.
It's stunning here.
Okay, so, straight ahead of me
is the Atlantic Ocean.
This is one long, straight,
fast gravel road.
There's absolutely nothing alive
either side of me.
A few plants maybe, blades of grass.
There is the sea. It's right there.
It was the perfect day,
and we had a sense of achievement.
We'd made it to the west coast of Africa.
All we had left to do
was to get to Cape Agulhas
to be on the south coast, on the tip.
It was a great sense of achievement
to be on that beach.
- What a mess!
- Such a mess.
- So, Ewan, what's happened?
- It's a very strong wind, as you can see,
and it's blown my tent,
which had these rocks inside
in the corners, very heavy rocks.
Knocked my bike over as well.
Can you believe that?
Ewan's bike was knocked over.
That's pretty strong wind. Look at
the size of the rocks that were in there.
There was rocks and stones
and all his equipment in the tent.
- Wow, Ewan.
- What a mess, eh?
And now he's putting his tent down, and
having a bit of a fight with it as well.
- Oh, it's ripped!
- Oh, no.
Oh, no, my lovely tent.
- Where? Oh, no.
- Here. Oh, no.
- We can sew that up.
- Bollocks!
A bit of gaffer tape on there, mate.
Yeah.
It's a bit of a blow, though.
I loved that tent.
Let's get the bike up.
That's my biggest worry.
Also a rock here.
- Is the bike okay?
- Yeah.
I think we should move the bike,
putting its head into the wind.
Yeah.
Leave that bit of tent up
like I've done with mine,
and I think it'd be all right in here.
You can sleep in it if you want.
No, I'll just sleep outside.
I'll just put it all away.
It's one less thing to do in the morning,
I guess.
What's happened there, Ewan?
Had a little accident with my sun cream.
- Has it exploded inside the bag?
- Yeah.
It fell over somewhere
and smashed it obviously. It's clearly
But the good thing is that it's
I love this bike I'm on. I just love it.
Every scratch on it, I put there.
Every dent on the panniers, I put there.
Every broken part, I broke.
Every piece of dirt was there
as I rode it along.
It's got me from Scotland to Namibia.
That's ridiculously far on a bike ride,
you know?
Tell me what's happening.
- Getting into the zone.
- What are we doing?
We're gonna go.
We're gonna attempt Betty's Hill.
It's this road here.
We're gonna see who can get
to the very top without falling off.
Do you think this could possibly be
our biggest mistake of the trip so far?
No.
This is for fun.
He's gonna do it. He's gonna do it!
Go on, my son!
This is the mark of where I got to, here.
But you can see, as you come over this dip
what you can't see from the bottom
is this horrible dip here.
So much expectation.
I'm not sure if I can live up to it.
Taking a nice and even pace, Charley.
Had to get yourself.
Oh, he's gone right to the top.
Just like to introduce you
to the king of the hill,
Mr. Charley Boorman.
He took Betty. He wrestled her
by the scruff of the neck to the ground
and he showed her who was boss,
didn't you?
- Aye.
- King of the hill, Charlie Boorman.
I've got 19 kilometers, judging by my map,
of dirt track.
And then we're on the tarmac,
and from the tarmac
it's tarmac all the way to Cape Town.
Savor every shake of the front end,
every slip of the back end
every heart-stopping moment.
There it is.
That's the end of our off-road experience
on Long Way Down.
Happy days, happy days, happy days.
It's a good feeling though, isn't it?
To know that there's not any more
long stretches of sand or gravel or mud.
We've done a lot of it.
Thanks for all that sandy stuff.
- We had a wild laugh, didn't we?
- Great.
- Great. Yeah.
- We really enjoyed it.
I was just saying
it's the first last thing.
It's the first thing that's finished
on this trip.
Which just makes me think about the whole
thing finishing, and I can hardly speak.
But it has been great, and some
of the roads have been tough as well.
It's been good fun though.
Tarmac. Isn't that beautiful?
It's so beautiful. I'm so happy.
We're here about 150 miles
north of Cape Agulhas,
which is the very tip of South Africa,
and families are coming in to Cape Town
and will come down to Cape Agulhas
for this sort of final convoy
into an arrivals party in Cape Town.
My family are coming, Charley's, Ewan's.
So that will be a good moment.
Charley hasn't seen his family,
you haven't seen your family
in three months, right?
Too long.
Seventy miles from the border,
disaster!
I was just having a wee chat
with Charley, there,
and suddenly
my bike started fishing around.
I thought, "Have I got a puncture?"
I had a puncture in my rear tire.
It was a gash.
- Here.
- There it is.
Perfect.
It was quite a substantial one.
Who knows what it is.
I got loads of bottles.
And do you have that thing to score the
Here it is.
I didn't have any puncture
on Long Way Round.
And this was the first puncture
I've had on Long Way Down,
so I suppose it was just my turn.
Anyway, I plugged it as best I could.
I had to use two plugs,
and a lot of glue, and it seemed to hold.
Bubbles.
I just hope we're not
putting it in too soon.
And I was quite pleased with that.
Yes, he can.
Ten or 15 minutes now to the border.
Our last border crossing,
from Namibia to South Africa.
Ewan McGregor, South Africa.
That's Charley Boorman.
That's South Africa.
Charley, South Africa.
I'm fucking delighted about it.
Look at that. There it is.
Look where we have got to, look.
Welcome to South Africa.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
And there we go.
There's the petrol station there, you see?
- We've got so long to go still.
- How long?
We've got 270 miles to go.
All that way to go there.
Let's get the flock out of here.
Let's make like babies and head out.
Howdy.
Hello.
Can I see your license please, sir?
- My license?
- Disc for the bike.
We rode from Scotland to here,
to Cape Town.
- Drive here?
- Rode on our bikes, yeah.
All the way? How long did it take?
- Three months.
- Three months. My God!
- So you enjoy your trip?
- Yeah, it's been great fun.
- I would never do that.
- Why not?
I'm too afraid of a lot of the things
that's going on.
There's nothing going on.
That's the thing.
Everybody thinks it's dangerous.
No, I read the papers. I watch the news.
There's a lot of murders going on
and all this
I'd rather stay at home.
We've just come from there.
It's a lovely country.
- Thanks very much.
- Thank you.
Have a nice journey.
- Take care.
- So where's your girlfriends?
His is in Cape Town.
Mine's in London In France.
- Bye-bye.
- Bye.
There's no campsite here. We have
to take two rooms in this little house.
No camping for the last night,
which is a great shame.
I feel the end of this one coming on
more than with Long Way Round.
I wasn't really thinking about the end
of it until we got there. But
I'm gonna miss it, you know.
I'm having such a great time.
And, you know, I was just trying
to think of all the countries
that I would like to go back to,
over the others.
And I can't think of one country that
I wouldn't want to go back to, really.
It's our second last day riding.
I feel a bit weird today.
I think I might do a left
instead of a right,
and just add on a couple of weeks.
The last part of any journey
is your most dangerous time.
If you're out for an hour ride,
that last five minutes
before you get back to your front door
is the most dangerous moment.
You drop your guard,
and that's when accidents tend to happen.
And I suppose in this 15,000 mile ride
this last two days
is our last five minutes, you know,
so, yeah, we have to be very careful.
Fuck!
I just took my helmet off,
and I heard this horrible accident noise
of a bike scraping down the road.
Just saw you go flying by.
I mean, you went down like head that way
and then rolled away.
You can see all the broken glass.
Look at your skid marks there.
Shit.
All right, well, take it easy.
We'll talk to you guys in a minute.
We're up here at the rendezvous point.
The guys are a few hundred miles
behind us,
and unfortunately just had
a horrible accident.
- That's the problem.
- Want me to hold the camera
- so you can speak?
- Fuck.
Shit.
Just following Charley.
He went just on the brakes like crazy,
and I nearly crashed into him,
but then I tried to avoid,
but obviously it knocked me over.
And that's the result.
Shit.
Fucking stupid.
You all right, Dai?
I'm more concerned about you, mate,
actually, when that adrenaline wears off.
It really knocked me over, big time.
Yeah, you really came off, right?
The most important thing is you're okay.
How're you feeling?
- Yeah, I'm okay.
- You sure?
- That was a big down.
- Fortunately, I had a bloody helmet on.
I knocked it on the floor, like, big time.
Shaken a little bit because, you know,
we're here on motorways now,
and I just know from last time
on Long Way Round,
as soon as you get on the motorway
and you feel like
you're seeing the home stretch
things start to come undone a little.
But thank God the guys are all right.
I was just putting on a bit of a show
for the garage.
I really am sorry, mate.
I really am sorry.
So, in fact, Ewan, that was purely
my fault for braking so hard.
I don't think he knew
that it was so close.
So, it's just a It's such a shame.
I know, but listen, it's turned out fine.
You know, Claudio's all right,
and the bike's ridable
and so we can carry on.
Don't worry yourself about it.
Here we go, last leg.
This is the penultimate day's riding.
I mean, it's just like being in Scotland.
We've come full circle.
Are you sure we haven't gone right round?
Thirty-three miles away from Gans Bay
where everyone's waiting.
But we're getting closer
and closer to my wife and my children.
We're looking forward to seeing him,
but I'm curious to know
how he's feeling.
'Cause it must be quite mixed knowing he's
coming to the end of this long trip,
but also probably very excited
to see all of us.
I can't quite believe
that we're almost there.
Twenty-six miles.
Hey!
Charley, leading us in.
Oh, here's one. Look.
Hurry, hurry, hurry!
- There they are!
- The cars can't be seen.
Steady, Charley. Steady.
So we're here.
I can't believe it. We're here.
Hello!
- Daddy!
- Hello, my guys.
Hello, my loves. Hello.
- Hi, guys. Hello, Kinvara.
- Hi, Charley.
How are you?
Hey, guys.
- Hello, my darling.
- Daddy!
Hello, my darling. Oh.
Hello, Kinvara, my love.
How are you?
Oh, my girls. I'm back with my girls.
Oh, I've been dreaming of this for ages.
Go, Charley!
You better see the girls first.
Oh, my God.
We're in Gans Bay.
Tomorrow we ride from here
to Cape Agulhas,
which is the southern tip of Africa.
And from there we ride to Cape Town.
And then the trip's finished.
Charley.
The sun's out.
'Cause yesterday it was raining,
squalling. It was miserable.
So, the sun has shone on the last day
of Long Way Down.
That can't be bad, can it?
There it is, guys. There's the sea.
How unbelievably amazing is that?
Cape Agulhas.
We went from the very north of Scotland
to the very south of Africa
on our trusty BMW bikes.
That's quite a reception, that, isn't it?
That's quite amazing.
Thanks, mate.
Cheers, guys.
Yeehaw!
At the moment,
we're standing on the Atlantic,
and, if I go like that, I'm in the Indian.
How's the Atlantic? Cold?
Yeah, it's a bit colder than your ocean.
It's warmer here. Quite like it.
Surprise, surprise!
We have our last little deadline.
We gotta get to Cape Town,
so we gotta get going.
- Look in your mirror, Charley.
- Fucking hell!
Just hundreds of more bikes in the mirror.
You look in your wing mirror
and you just see
bikes going back as far as you can see.
All these people were there
because they liked Long Way Round
and they'd followed our trip
on the Internet.
Oh, helicopter.
It was a real moment because
I was sitting there looking over at Ewan,
and we were sort of looking at each other
and thinking,
"Christ, you know,
we did this together. We rode here."
And as we got into Cape Town, I realized
how amazing it was, what we were doing.
In some respects,
John O'Groats seems like a year ago,
and in other respects,
it feels like the time's just whizzed by.
Finally getting underway
after months and months and months.
Some of the best roads in the world
to ride a bike on.
They're absolutely spectacular.
I'm so cold and wet.
Down to the southern tip of Italy.
Then we're going to Africa the next day.
We're going to Africa the next day!
Our first African camp, Charley.
Hey!
Done a lot of riding,
some of it very hard,
but all of it spectacularly satisfying
after the event.
This is Gaddafi country.
Can you believe it?
We got caught in a sandstorm
at night and got almost blown away.
We're having a bit of a crisis
here in the old tent.
Oh, my God. It's the pyramids.
Oh, my God!
And there we were riding around, and there
was no one else there. It was just us.
This is the stuff
of real adventure traveling, isn't it?
I've never seen anything like it.
It's brilliant.
So, that's it. We're now in Sudan.
This is now the proper
Lawrence of Arabia-type desert.
Those slap-in-the-face moments, you know?
When you suddenly realize where you are.
This is hard, man.
We stopped one place,
and I was just walking back to my bike,
and she said, "Hey, come here."
And as I came over, she just handed me
this big chunk of watermelon,
and said, "Sit down and eat.
No, no, no. No money. It's just for you."
And people were like that
everywhere we went.
My new friend.
We've camped in villages
with people who have absolutely nothing.
Yeah!
Just pinch myself sometimes
that we've ridden these motorcycles
from John O'Groats.
This is some of the heaviest rain
I've ever ridden in.
And I've ridden in some heavy rain,
let me tell you.
I was slightly worried about Kenya.
We came into the north,
which is quite dry.
A hundred kilometers of the road
was really hard work.
And then it got really bad.
It was a great moment
for us all as a team,
where just everyone got on with it
and we had a good laugh.
We had a really good time doing it.
We're really out there, aren't we?
Amazing. Just amazing.
You're a good-looking man, you see?
I've ridden my bike from John O'Groats
to somewhere where there are elephants.
To be so close to gorillas
is extraordinary.
Beautiful, beautiful day.
Something that maybe only happens
once in your life, you know?
How are you, sir? Nice to meet you.
- So you came on the bikes?
- Yeah.
A full tank takes you how long?
Tanzania, Malawi. No wife, wife
How are you?
She's never ridden a bike before.
And then, there she was,
riding along with me, you know.
I was sitting behind her,
and I could see her riding a bike
with a big yellow bag in the back.
I thank my lucky stars I'm on this trip.
It's the best thing in the world
for the soul and for the spirit,
and for your head and your heart.
Look where we have got to. Look.
Welcome to South Africa.
It's one hell of a journey.
I've had the most extraordinary time.
Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
Fantastic, guys.
A hell of a ride in, wasn't it?
Beautiful on the ride in.
Just stunning.
I love traveling like this.
Especially because you're on a bike,
people are more caring about it.
I think people sense that you're
vulnerable to the elements and to danger.
And that's nice.
It's the perfect way to travel, I think.
It's quite a tough one, this
but we did it.
All these trips are always
about the bikes.
The fundamental thing is riding bikes.
Any excuse to go and ride a bike.
And the other part of it
was to experience Africa
and to ride through Africa and show people
that it's a lovely place.
Now sitting at the very south of Africa,
having traveled through all of it,
I know that it's brilliant.
It's incredible.
I think there are moments
that you connect with Africa,
like on a morning when you have camped
and you get on the bike and you ride.
Yeah, it hasn't sunk in
that we were here, really.
I'd quite like to turn around and just
carry on back up the way out, really.
I don't want to stop.
Traveling through Africa
is quite complicated in many ways.
I feel like we only barely
scratched the surface, you know.
Three cars, two bikes
and one concluded dream. We're here.
We love doing this stuff.
I'm glad it's over,
but I'm also a little upset that it's over
because, you know, Africa touched us,
in a big way.
I know Africa now.
I know my Africa, the one I've learned
by doing Long Way Down, but I know it.
Well, I hope that it will inspire people
to come to Africa
because Africa is an unbelievable place
to travel through.
We've ridden from the top of it
to the bottom of it, uninterrupted.
There's a sense of belonging
that comes from having ridden here.
It's the most beautiful place
I've ever been to. Unbelievable.