A bumpy ride SPECTRUM MAGAZINE Edition

• Published in: Scotland on Sunday
• Main Author: The Catherine Deveney Interview
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Edinburgh (UK) NLA Media 21.10.2007
• ISSN: 0955-8756

Here's how it all developed. About ten years ago, Boorman and [Ewan McGregor] met on the set of a film called The Serpent's Kiss, and a shared passion for motorbikes sparked a close friendship. In 2004, they set out on a four-month, 20,000-mile motorbike trip from London to New York, travelling through Russia, Mongolia and Siberia in a journey that was documented in the film Long Way Round. This year, aided by VisitScotland, which runs a Bikers Welcome scheme, they started out from John o' Groats and ended up in Cape Town. The two men visited charitable projects, mainly connected to Unicef, but that wasn't the main incentive for the journeys. "The fundamental part of the journey is riding the bikes and the two of us spending time together," says Boorman, before McGregor adds: "It's the discovery, the exploring of remote places." it was not until they entered Ethiopia that they hit the Africa of their imagination. "You are faced with lots of children," says McGregor. "You can be in the middle of nowhere and then in five minutes surrounded by little faces in rags, snotty noses and often bad eyes. But they are cheeky, funny little people, really cheeky. They all want money and they all want you to give them a pen or whatever, so on many levels it's quite complicated. You don't come in and say, 'Oh my God, the poverty is terrible.' That's not how it strikes you. But slowly it starts to bother you. Subconsciously you are faced with it everywhere you go and you realise there are very few clinics... no access to medication." "It's just the negativity of the people who write about it," says Boorman. "Look at Ellen MacArthur... I don't know if she has children." She doesn't. "It would be awfully sad," he goes on, "to hear people say, 'Oh, my wife would never let me do that.' Awfully sad if you have a dream and you want to go off - not necessarily for three months but a week or two... And I don't think it's anything to do with this thing people call 'a pink ticket'."