Backpack RIVALS
Five new pairs of intrepid travellers race15,000km from Japan to Indonesia
Race Across the World Wednesday, 9pm, BBC1
The bustling city of Sapporo in Japan is the starting point for five intrepid pairs of contestants as a fourth series of BBC1’S Baftawinning Race Across the World gets under way this week.
The five new teams, including two mums and daughters and a retired couple, are racing 15,000km by land and sea, crossing eight borders as they navigate countries including South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia to see who will be first to reach the finishing line in Lombok, Indonesia.
With a very tight budget and all smartphones, bank cards and internet access banned, their ingenuity is tested to the max to see which team can get to the final destination fastest and pocket £20,000 in prize money.
Tv&satellite Week met up with the pairs to find out more…
STEPHEN & VIV
Retired couple Stephen, 61, and
Viv, 65, from Rutland, describe themselves as the ‘token oldies’ for this year’s race and applied after watching last year’s series.
‘It was physically exhausting but mentally exhausting, too,’ says Viv. ‘For the first three weeks of the race, we were just crying all the time!’
A highlight for Stephen was helping harvest wasabi in Japan.
‘We knew we weren’t going to win in a foot race, so we had to play to our strengths and try to outsmart the other pairs,’ he says.
SHARON & BRYDIE
Kent-based mum and daughter, Sharon, 52, and Brydie, 25, say they weren’t fazed by the prospect of going without home comforts.
‘I’m probably more at home roughing it than being in a five-star hotel,’ says cleaner Sharon.
Brydie, a snowboard instructor, agrees: ‘We can sleep anywhere. You can leave us on the floor with our backpacks on and we’ll sleep. Starting the race in Japan was amazing. We were blown away by just how kind the people were and how much they wanted to help us. One lady even gave me her shoes!’
EUGENIE & ISABEL
‘Mum and I are not as close as we could be, so I thought this would be a really cool thing for us to do together,’ explains Isabel, 25, a trainee clinical scientist who lives in Birmingham. ‘By being together round the clock, we had no choice but to bond!’
The pair reveal a low point was losing their map.
‘Isabel was panicking that we’d get banned from continuing the race,’ says mum Eugenie, who admits she wasn’t much help: ‘Although
I’m quite a patient person, I have absolutely no sense of direction!’
JAMES & BETTY
Siblings James, 21, and Betty, 25, from Yorkshire, describe themselves as sporty and very competitive.
‘Communication was one of the biggest challenges,’ says Betty. ‘I don’t think we realised quite how hard it would be. When you go on holiday, you can usually say a few words like, ‘Hello,’ or, ‘Thank you,’ but in Japan we had no clue.’
‘We often had to mime or draw pictures to try to explain what we needed and we massively messed up with the cost of a meal in Tokyo,’ adds James. ‘We hadn’t understood the prices on the menu properly!’
OWEN & ALFIE
Twenty-year-old friends Owen and Alfie, from Hertfordshire, met at school and have always had a love of adventure.
‘We’d been desperate to see Mount Fuji but it was cloudy the day we were there, so it was a bit of a let-down,’ says football referee Alfie. ‘And we got lost in Tokyo. We thought we were in the centre of the city when actually we were in some random business district.’
But they welcomed smartphones being banned from the race.
‘It felt like a good detox from social media,’ says trainee pilot Owen.