THE BIKES CHARLEY AND EWAN BROKE
Ewan and Charley rode identical BMW R1150GS Adventures, lent to them by BMW UK. Ewan’s bike was sold for £87,000 in 2004 to Kim Keller in a Unicef charity auction while BMW UK still own Charley’s bike. BMW actually told Charley and Ewan: “We don’t know if you will make it, but the bikes will!” They were right…
Subframe
“The only thing that broke on the bike was the subframe, which was down to us over-loading it! We weren’t meant to exceed 20kg but you could barely lift each pannier! In the middle of Mongolia we fixed one with two tyre levers and loads of cable ties made into a splint!”
Seat
“I eventually used a towel on the seat as when you are sitting on plastic it makes your arse sweat and that creates an oscillation in your arse hairs, leading to them pulling.”
Water
“We had to remove the bikes’ sparkplugs twice and turn the engine over to get water out after crossing too deep water.”
Punctures
“We had so many punctures. My record was 11 fixes in one tyre…”
Packing “I remember standing in a room with all our gear laid out on the floor – two complete tool kits, the works – and an old guy who had done a bit of touring came over and said ‘that’s a lot of stuff, have you thought about sharing a tool kit?’ We just looked at each other and thought ‘what does he know…’ We ended up chucking half our kit away and the handling was transformed!”
Wheels
“When we reached Alaska we had been off-road for months and I remember riding on tarmac for the first time and the bike shaking like hell, it was only then I realised just how dented the rims were! We had to replace three rims as they were so knackered, one which was ‘borrowed’ from a customer’s bike in the dealer’s workshop.”
Brakes
“We changed the front and rear pads once, just because we thought we should.”
Fuel
“Sometimes I’d be following Ewan and you could smell a weird smell because the fuel was such poor quality!”
Crashes
“We had so many crashes, but the engine bars and cylinder heads saved the worse of the damage.”