Motorcycling’s favorite bromance is back on the road with the new Long Way installment, ‘Long Way Home,’ featuring Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on a 10,000-mile ride from McGregor’s home in Scotland to Boorman’s home in England. 

The 10-part series — set to premiere May 9 on Apple TV+ — won’t feature the adventure bikes that made the duo so popular within the motorcycle community, but that doesn’t mean we’re not in for an adventure. In fact, the vintage European bikes they chose for the ride — McGregor on a 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado police bike and Boorman on a classic BMW R75/5 — should make for especially satisfying viewing.

The path the pair devised is far from straight, as the mates head across the North Sea to Scandinavia, all the way up to the Arctic Circle and then down to the Baltics and through continental Europe, before eventually hopping back over the English Channel two months later. Their adventure will span 17 countries, showcasing breathtaking scenery and winding along some of the greatest driving roads in the world.

In classic Long Way style, this series is sure to feature interesting remote roads, unpredictable weather, and the kind of cultural detours that make McGregor and Boorman adventures so fun to watch. However, it’s the pair’s supporting cast—the two ratty-looking, ’70s-era vintage bikes—that is likely to add the most color.

McGregor’s 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado is a workhorse of a vintage tourer, originally built for police use and powered by an 844cc air-cooled V-twin that delivers around 64 horsepower. The transversely mounted engine is mated to a 4-speed transmission and shaft drive, and back in the day, offered dependable, low-maintenance performance. The bike’s steel double-cradle frame, telescopic front forks and twin rear shocks were able to provide a level of stability and comfort for long-distance travel back in the day.

Boorman’s early 1970s-era BMW R75/5 is another touring-intended classic that had a reputation for being bulletproof. Its 745cc air-cooled, horizontally opposed boxer-style twin produced around 50 horsepower delivered via a 4-speed transmission and shaft drive. As with the Guzzi, the BMW rides on telescopic front forks and twin rear shocks. It features drum brakes on both wheels and classic spoked rims.

While the pair’s chosen bikes are known for their reliability, a 10,000-mile road trip through some of Europe’s most remote regions is a big ask for 50-year-old machines, and mechanical hiccups are almost guaranteed to be part of the story.

In an interview with MCN, Boorman said of their fresh adventure:  “Last time we were on two electric bikes. They were the pinnacle of technology, but still ‘Long Way Up’ was very difficult at times. The idea this time around was to do something totally different – a new challenge – hence the old bikes.”

McGregor has said the idea for the series was born during their ride from Ushuaia to Los Angeles, as they struggled with their electric Harleys. “On a rather tricky, sandy bit of ‘Long Way Up,’  Charley and I started to daydream about another trip to keep our minds off the scary road at hand,” he says. “This is that trip.”

Of course, the journey into our living rooms began back in 2004 with ‘Long Way Round,’ when the friends—who first met on ‘The Serpent’s Kiss’ movie set—rode a pair of BMW R1150GS Adventures around the world. They set off from the UK and headed east across Europe, passing through Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. After reentering Russia to cross the vast wilderness of Siberia, they shipped their bikes across the Bering Strait and continued riding across North America, finishing in New York.

Forever bonded by their grueling yet deeply enlightening first journey, the pair went on to film ‘Long Way Down,’ a 15,000-mile odyssey that saw McGregor and Boorman ride 2007 BMW R1200GS Adventures from Scotland to South Africa. More recently, the adventure junkies reunited for ‘Long Way Up,’ traveling from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Los Angeles, California aboard twin 2019 Harley-Davidson LiveWires.

At the time of that first RTW adventure in 2004, Boorman says the trip was all about fun, not fame, and neither of the riders thought the show would necessarily be a success. However, their timing couldn’t have been better: “There was this sudden public appetite for adventure travel, and BMW had just changed their fleet. It all came at the right time, and we were able to ride that wave.”

After initially approaching KTM and being turned down, McGregor and Boorman turned to BMW, whose GS models went on to feature prominently in the first two installments. The bikes—and the duo’s everyman, learn-as-you-go approach—struck a chord with viewers, helping to ignite a surge of interest in adventure motorcycling.

While the brand new ‘Long Way Home’ series premiering on May 9 on Apple TV+ might not feature the thrills and spills of the first two off-road slanted installments, we know we can count on the boys for a good time, as well as a look into new cultures we may never explore otherwise. 

For Boorman, the televised journeys are still less about fame than they are about friendship: ”Doing the trip with Ewan is the great part for me. We’re old friends and it’s always fun to be together – I really do hope that comes through in the new series.”

As of this writing, an Apple TV+ subscription costs $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year). If you’d rather not pay for a service you don’t already use, you could wait until late June to start a free trial and watch all 10 episodes at once. Apple TV+ has previously released the first few episodes of a series together, followed by weekly installments.

Author: Jamie Elvidge

Jamie has been a motorcycle journalist for more than 30 years, testing the entire range of bikes for the major print magazines and specializing in adventure-travel related stories. To date she’s written and supplied photography for articles describing what it’s like to ride in all 50 states and 43 foreign countries, receiving two Lowell Thomas Society of American Travel Writer’s Awards along the way. Her most-challenging adventure yet has been riding in the 2018 GS Trophy in Mongolia as Team AusAmerica’s embedded journalist.