Race Across the World

[Liquorandvinegar]

New series starting next week - really looking forward to it. The teams are travelling in Asia, but I can't find information about the couples yet. Wednesday nights sorted!

Interesting article about Caroline, clearly not just a SAHM
https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/61-year-old-rider-takes-on-bbcs-race-across-the-world-891524?fbclid=IwY2xjawKKlo5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBGMWp1SHlFb3A4bkZnWFk1AR5e52RLNwSRXVozyuMQ-k1hF5P2Q-msPL4xNoW7j6qsZthLPHwKbCwxFtTK7Q_aem_DfarCxmq1kAsUmpD5-LlHQ

There's a lot of carefully curated tourist areas around China, and in general, the levels of re-development are crazy.

They'll build tourist temples that have never seen a genuine monk. The traditional and indigenous villages are all carefully managed.

We went to one small, obscure city (only the size of Birmingham!) and huge swathes of it were closed for reconstruction. For us, it was a base to access some remote hanging temples.

There's a huge amount of smoke and mirrors. The government know what people want to see and recreate it. There isn't a culture of conserving the integrity of places.
Near Guillin we went to some incredible caves that would have been fabulous in their own right but that wasn't enough and they'd been jazzed up with neon lights.

It's a fascinating place!

We went around the Olympics era.
The plight of the Uighar people had been in the news, but at that stage it was more about supressing protest than "re-education". We met a chap in a hostel who had just got out of that region ASAP having seen fighting and bodies in the streets

I didn't attempt to use facebook while using internet cafés. It was widely done using VPNs but wasn't worth the bother!

Alas it was just before Kindles came out because that would have been far easier to carry than the complete The Lord of the Rings

We gave up trying to travel by train through India as decent sleepers needed booking too far in advance and it ended up being cost-effective to hire a taxi... especially after the food poisoning that took weeks to get over... From an airport of all places. The eating fresh street food from busy stalls worked fine for nearly 3 months!

We did travel standard class on the day we walked over the border between Nepal and India. That was a long, hard day of travel with jeeps, busses, trains, tuk tuks. Who knew you could get over 20 people on a jeep!

The Nepalese buses were a spectacle. The roads are perilous and the roadsides littered with the (often burned out) carcasses of busses. We went past one bus with people still getting out which was somewhat scary!

When I hear Take That's Never Forget, it always takes me back to it coming up on my MP3 player on a Nepalese bus, and how vibrant everything was. It was one of those moments that the lyrics ring true "this will be someone else's dream"

I digress from the programme

Gutted that Gaz and Yin were so far out and eliminated. I found them warm and interesting.

I like the brothers and their dynamic.

The sisters are very cooly efficient. They may have more language barrier issues when they've left China which could be interesting and change the dynamic.

The young couple are very young. They're doing well though. It would be nice to see more confidence growing.

Thomas is frustrating. I hope he can find some resilience. I wonder if there is something like undiagnosed ADHD in the mix with his history at school, going into a basic labouring job and forgetting things like the money belt.
There's an echo of the dynamic of the mum and son from series 2, but they had more warmth to make them more engaging. When they burned out, they did it on a high finishing off with some bucket list experiences like the horse riding.

The next stages will probably have more of a chaotic edge.

I'd love to see more behind the scenes content!

That puts quite a different slant on her, doesn't it? I mean, they've pushed the sahm thing quite a bit...and yet she isn't really!

All the I want to prove I'm not just a mum...

I can't understand the angle with Caroline saying her life was mapped out as a SAHM. Doing the maths, she had Tom when she was 40, similar to me and my kids. So she would have had a couple of decades of jobs, maybe career, adventures and experiences.

I'm a SAHM to my small children but as I say to my eldest, I worked for many years before I had them. Also, surely she could easily had time for employment as her son got older and more independent if she'd wanted to?

I think she's done a good job with her son by the way, as a stoner / drop out he's now working and hopefully on the straight and narrow. I can relate to that, even private school children can fall in with bad crowd. hopefully he's quit it all. As for career for him, if he's a labourer there's many specialisations he could do like bricklaying, electrician etc.

That is a very odd angle to take for someone who was a champion eventer. She has not made her husband look great. She's made him sound like a controlling bloke who wouldn't let her do anything, but that's clearly not the case. Has she not told her son about her life before she had him (at 40?)

I don't think she's made her husband sound controlling or made it sound like it's him who wouldn't let her do anything

That's not the impression I brought away from her

Caroline - an eventer! That’s a tough sport, I wonder if it comes up at any point in RAW? A bit disingenuous of the programme, and if she keeps one or more horses, she would be plenty fit from the grind of stable work.
She is also a vv successful amateur eventer, which means she is highly competitive

Andy Murray’s mum?

Don’t think his mums ever had a job tho has she ?

Thomas is frustrating. I hope he can find some resilience. I wonder if there is something like undiagnosed ADHD in the mix with his history at school, going into a basic labouring job and forgetting things like the money belt. I was wondering this.

I think she said she gave up working when she got married

Yes so she’s not a SAHM to an adult son but a successful Eventer. No wonder she looks so fit!

Like others, I’d love to know her pre-kids life

To go off on a tangent.....China must have a massive electricity bill: everywhere is lit up and neon or light displays! Some beautiful scenery and (phoney) historic villages but I'm looking forward to seeing the more natural and 'raw' Nepal.

The more I watch the more I like the two brothers

I agree. I'd quite like them to win.

I don't mean to be harsh, but it might not be the worst thing if the very young couple decide to part but stay best friends like Yin and Gaz. On the other hand I do know couples my age (around 70) who have been together since their teens so if they survive the trip still speaking maybe they will.

Just to say that being a champion eventer at BE 80 is still very much a hobby. 80 refers to the height of the fences in cm, which is nowhere near the fences you may be imagining, so definitely wouldn’t have stopped her being a SAHM!

I can't work out who I want to win - none of them a hugely likeable or unlikeable. I think the young welsh couple are sweet.

I was in China a few weeks ago, and in some ways it was very different to that shown in the programme - the towns/cities which aren't at all as picturesque as the ones they've visited. Even the lovely ones have huge parts that are modern and ugly and full of traffic. The trains and people though are just the same as my experience (although it's good to see the translation on this programme - irl we were just in the dark as to what the chinese people were saying to us - google translate was a godsend!).

I would like the 2 brothers to win

well maybe the brother who went to boarding school was neurodiverse and has excelled, is an accountant after all

I'd like the sisters to win. Thought it was a bit too probing when Letitia's unhappiness in earlier years was discussed, she looked so unhappy.

Can we please have one thread where people aren’t being armchair diagnosed and stereotyped as neurodiverse?

It's not so much that, it's that she's presented herself as a lacking in confidence stay at home mum who hasn't done anything with her life and is now trying to get a bit of her life back.

When that obviously is not the case.

Yes. That view of herself was really strange. She's younger than me and I didn't grow up in a time when you got married and sacrificed yourself to it. Maybe some women lacking the means to do anything for themselves but she was obviously quite wealthy. Maybe that's why it seemed so off, because it wasn't true.