By Any Means with Charley Boorman

I can’t believe I never got around to blogging about this, but I’m a big fan of Long Way Round and Long Way Down, the motorcycle journey of Ewan McGregor and his best friend, Charley Boorman. Long Way Round was their trip from London to New York through Central Europe and Asia, while Long Way Down was from John O’Groats in Scotland to Cape Town in South Africa.

I have the DVD and books of both trips. After watching Long Way Down again the other day, I was reminded of the overland trip he was taking from Ireland to Sydney. I read about this trip last year, but totally forgot and neglected to follow the updates in the website. Googling for Charley Boorman the other day, I ended up at his Twitter account, and found out that he just completed another overland trip, By Any Means 2, this time from Sydney up to Tokyo. This trip took him from Australia to Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan.

Unlike the Long Way series, By Any Means has Charley taking all sorts of transport from motorbikes to bicycles to tuk-tuks to vintage cars to speedboats to cargo ships and even a wakeboard to cross from Malaysia to Singapore. The crew is smaller this time: it was just Charley, Russ Malkin (the director) and Mungo, the cameraman.

In By Any Means 2, Claudio Von Plata, their cameraman for Long Way Round and Long Way Down is back, and thanks to his Twitter updates, I found out that the crew was in the country last June and parts of July, passing through Malaybalay, Bohol, Cebu, Leyte, Legaspi, Camarines Sur, Manila and Subic Bay. I’m so looking forward to watching this episode.

While Googling, I found episodes of By Any Means uploaded on Google Video. It’s not the best of quality, and episode 4 is missing, but hey, it’s enough for a fix. (Edit March 25, 2010: Reader Lu found Episode 4! Thanks Lu!)

Episode 1: Planning, Preparation, Ireland, Isle of Man, England
Episode 2: Western & Eastern Europe, Middle East
Episode 3: India
Episode 4: Nepal and China
Episode 5: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia
Episode 6: Indonesia and Australia

Comments

11 responses to “By Any Means with Charley Boorman”

  1. yam Avatar
    yam

    Love this guy too! There was an article in PDI or PhilStar (can’t remember which one) about him last month yata. There was a picture of Charlie in a Unicef t-shirt. I’ll watch out for the Philippine episode 🙂

  2. Simon Jones Avatar

    By Any Means 2. That’s an awful title, but I am sure if the series is as good as the first it’ll be really great, can’t wait to see it.

  3. Christina Avatar
    Christina

    Ewan McGregor is the hotness.

    Wait… what?

  4. nina Avatar

    Christina: He’s definitely the hotness 😉

  5. Terry Hockenhull Avatar
    Terry Hockenhull

    For anyone who is interested, I flew Charlie from Angeles City (Angeles City Flying Club) to Subic Bay in my S-12 ultralight, I hear his book (for BAM II) is already out and I know the Philippines episode was shown last weekend in U.K.

    1. David Ellis Avatar

      Terry,

      Are you the Terry Hockenhull whose friendship I so valued and enjoyed at HKSB in the 1970/80s? On Flickr, you look like him, despite the beard and the passage of time, and the Flickr profile mentions you spent 10 years in HK.

      If I am right, and if you want to get back in touch, I would love to hear from you. We can even talk flying — I had about 40 hours in the right seat of a friend’s turbo Toga, but never went for the license.

      David

      Email ngrailrei@gmail.com

      Profile at http://hfdigest.com/?page_id=417

  6. alexis Avatar
    alexis

    Can anyone pls tell me when and what channel is By Any Means is shown?
    I am also watching out for the philippines episode. Thanx.

  7. nina Avatar

    Alexis: Watch out for it in National Geographic.

  8. alexis Avatar
    alexis

    great! thank you.

  9. […] keep a handful of authors and series in my collection (Peter Moore, Bill Bryson, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman). Unlike my Schützen notebook contest, this travel book giveaway is open to all JustWandering […]

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