(LONG) WAY TO GO, EWAN & CHARLEY

I see Ewan and Charley are now thinking of doing Long Way Up, from the bottom of South America to the top of Alaska.

In truth, they’ve been thinking of it for some time. About 10 years ago, a year after they’d done Long Way Down, a BBC Radio presenter asked Charley what their next adventure was, and he said probably the Pan-American Highway from Chile to Alaska.

“Too late. Geoff Hill’s already done it for The Road to Gobblers Knob. Great book. You should read it,” said the presenter. Naturally, I’m too modest to mention the story. In the meantime, one of their big decisions will be which bikes to use.

They’ve used BMW R 1150 and R 1200 GSs so far, but Ewan’s appeared in Moto Guzzi ads and Charley’s now an ambassador for Triumph, so we could see him setting off from Ushuaia in Argentina on an Explorer.

The best bits of the first generation Explorer in 2011 were the renowned smoothness of Triumph triples, low down torque and great handling.

The bad bits were a not particularly effective screen and a fly-by-wire throttle that was annoyingly twitchy at low revs, which combined with a wet weight of 277kg made low speed handling, er, interesting.

An update a few years later tamed that throttle response and added more gizmos, and it’s immediately obvious that the third generation bike has been on a diet: Triumph has managed to dump 11kg off the previous model.

With the power up 2bhp, that makes progress satisfying brisk, particularly in Sport mode, and for such a big bike, handling is trademark Triumph – precise and planted, with the electronic suspension turning the ride into a magic carpet.

It’s made even safer by cornering traction control and cornering ABS.

Only possible negative points are a screen that’s still not brilliant, and a 200-mile range compared with up to 400 miles I’ve managed on a GS.

But then, that’s only a problem if you’re crossing the Atacama Desert.

Oh wait, Charley will be. Still, if he grabs that copy of Gobblers, he’ll find out where the filling stations are.

Not to mention the world’s most optimistic ice-cream salesman, selling Magnum bars on an empty beach in Peru. I bought two – and made his day.