copy/pasted from sporttouring.net
LONDON - Ewan McGregor (news) is getting ready to travel from London to New York. But there will be no first-class comfort for the down-to-earth Scot. He's going by road.
McGregor and fellow actor Charley Boorman plan to set out this week — the exact date is not being disclosed — on a motorcycle journey across Europe, Asia and North America that will get them to New York City by about July.
"It's such an obvious route," McGregor insisted Tuesday. "It's just straight across — you just go from London to New York, going east. I'm surprised more people don't do it."
Spurred by a desire for adventure and a hankering for the open road, McGregor and Boorman hatched a plan for a riding holiday that grew from a trip through Spain to a 20,000-mile odyssey across three continents, from the highways of Western Europe to Russia's rutted roads and the grassy tracks of the Mongolian steppe.
After crossing Europe, Russia, Kasazkhstan and Mongolia to the eastern tip of Siberia, the duo's planned route winds through Alaska, down the Rockies and across the Great Plains and midwestern United States. It will all be done by road, except for a train trip under the English Channel and a short flight across the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska.
"When we get off the train in Calais, the next stop is eastern Siberia," said McGregor, 33, whose latest film is the Tim Burton (news) fantasy "Big Fish." "We follow our front wheel from Calais to the other side of the globe."
McGregor, who burst to international fame as the rangy heroin addict Renton in "Trainspotting" and attained sci-fi immortality as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in two "Star Wars" films, met Boorman on the set of the 1997 film "Serpent's Kiss." The pair bonded over a shared love of motorcycles.
"The sensation of riding a bike is something you can't really explain," said McGregor, affable and attractively disheveled during an early morning interview. "You either love it or you're not interested in it, I suppose. It feels pretty good to me."
As the scale of the two-wheeled trip grew, so did its entourage. The journey — dubbed the Long Way Round — is being filmed for a television series, to be shown on Bravo in the United States and Sky in Britain; the pair also have a contract for a book, to be published in the fall.
McGregor and Boorman have undergone hostile-environments training with former British commandos, consulted a nutritionist and worked out with a personal trainer. As they ride, their 1,150cc BMW motorcycles will be laden with tents, dried lentils, cameras and travel gadgetry — and accompanied a cameraman on a third bike. A film crew will meet them every week or so to record footage for the series.
"One of the reasons we got the TV people involved is that we started planning this ourselves and we realized it's a massive amount of work," said Boorman, 37-year-old son of "Deliverance" director John Boorman (news). "And we wanted to have some kind of record of what we're doing. And then it just sort of seemed logical to get someone in to help us with that."
"We're not very good at filling in forms and stuff like that," added McGregor, a tad apologetic. "The idea of queuing to get visas and all that was just ..."
He insists, however, that the trappings will not interfere with their travel experience.
"You can sit on a bike all day long, but what the journey's about is who we meet along the way," McGregor said.
"A lot of the places we're going to have nomadic populations — Mongolia, Kazakhstan. The people are on the move all the time, so their culture is set up to accept and look after strangers or travelers such as ourselves. Also, there's not many roads there. It should just be a joy."
LONDON - Ewan McGregor (news) is getting ready to travel from London to New York. But there will be no first-class comfort for the down-to-earth Scot. He's going by road.
McGregor and fellow actor Charley Boorman plan to set out this week — the exact date is not being disclosed — on a motorcycle journey across Europe, Asia and North America that will get them to New York City by about July.
"It's such an obvious route," McGregor insisted Tuesday. "It's just straight across — you just go from London to New York, going east. I'm surprised more people don't do it."
Spurred by a desire for adventure and a hankering for the open road, McGregor and Boorman hatched a plan for a riding holiday that grew from a trip through Spain to a 20,000-mile odyssey across three continents, from the highways of Western Europe to Russia's rutted roads and the grassy tracks of the Mongolian steppe.
After crossing Europe, Russia, Kasazkhstan and Mongolia to the eastern tip of Siberia, the duo's planned route winds through Alaska, down the Rockies and across the Great Plains and midwestern United States. It will all be done by road, except for a train trip under the English Channel and a short flight across the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska.
"When we get off the train in Calais, the next stop is eastern Siberia," said McGregor, 33, whose latest film is the Tim Burton (news) fantasy "Big Fish." "We follow our front wheel from Calais to the other side of the globe."
McGregor, who burst to international fame as the rangy heroin addict Renton in "Trainspotting" and attained sci-fi immortality as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in two "Star Wars" films, met Boorman on the set of the 1997 film "Serpent's Kiss." The pair bonded over a shared love of motorcycles.
"The sensation of riding a bike is something you can't really explain," said McGregor, affable and attractively disheveled during an early morning interview. "You either love it or you're not interested in it, I suppose. It feels pretty good to me."
As the scale of the two-wheeled trip grew, so did its entourage. The journey — dubbed the Long Way Round — is being filmed for a television series, to be shown on Bravo in the United States and Sky in Britain; the pair also have a contract for a book, to be published in the fall.
McGregor and Boorman have undergone hostile-environments training with former British commandos, consulted a nutritionist and worked out with a personal trainer. As they ride, their 1,150cc BMW motorcycles will be laden with tents, dried lentils, cameras and travel gadgetry — and accompanied a cameraman on a third bike. A film crew will meet them every week or so to record footage for the series.
"One of the reasons we got the TV people involved is that we started planning this ourselves and we realized it's a massive amount of work," said Boorman, 37-year-old son of "Deliverance" director John Boorman (news). "And we wanted to have some kind of record of what we're doing. And then it just sort of seemed logical to get someone in to help us with that."
"We're not very good at filling in forms and stuff like that," added McGregor, a tad apologetic. "The idea of queuing to get visas and all that was just ..."
He insists, however, that the trappings will not interfere with their travel experience.
"You can sit on a bike all day long, but what the journey's about is who we meet along the way," McGregor said.
"A lot of the places we're going to have nomadic populations — Mongolia, Kazakhstan. The people are on the move all the time, so their culture is set up to accept and look after strangers or travelers such as ourselves. Also, there's not many roads there. It should just be a joy."
