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!

On the couple, I think Sioned is so beautiful.
i so wish she wouldn’t rush to grow up and I hope this show makes her realise there is a whole world to be explored in her 20s.
and I’m not convinced that Fin js right for her at all.

I want the brothers to win though

Actually I’ve just had a look at Sioned’s insta - they have done a lot of travelling before this !

the back stories are so hammed up!

Yes. It’s wearing

i am not diagnosising, i am juist wondering about the boarding school

They’re all lovely, I think people are being very hard on Tom – can you imagine making those comments about someone from working-class background? He’s lost and his mum is trying to help him and probably playing down her past achievements.

Sioned is too young to get married and Fin was right to be honest - harsh as it might have been.

I want the brothers to win - they’re great

Brothers are my favourite after elimination. However I like all of them so I’m not really fussed! I don’t like the elimination round. I don’t think it’s adds anything to the race.

I guess they all have to do a great big interview at the start, talk about everything in their lives, get loads of questions, probed for worries etc. Then the editor types pick out a few bits of what you say, and keep dropping it in as the show plays out - so it feels from our perspective that she’s going on about “oh I was a SAHM” all the time, but most of that is interspersed from a single interview way before they set off.

Yes, I suppose it's all in the edit.

I've just watched it and can't work out why the married-and-divorced couple were so far behind. Can anyone explain, please? Admittedly, I was doing other things while it was on, but was shocked to see they were over 1,000 km away at the end. I felt he wanted to get back with her but that she was grieving her partner who'd died.

With the young Welsh couple, I thought she could do much better than him. She says something like, "I know I'll always be carrying him" and I winced - that's really tough when you're so young. (And when you're older!)

They went the wrong way. The travelled to the east to make a faster connection I believe.

@MounjaroMounjaro they got stranded on the mainland due to a typhoon when trying to get to the previous checkpoint, so only got to the previous checkpoint as the leaders were leaving.

Oh, thank you! That explains it.

I'm fascinated by the brothers, they are both very charismatic in their own way.
I should imagine the school thing was simply because Melvyn was the happy go lucky one and Brian had greater academic potential.

I felt for the mother in the mother-and-son combo. I would have hated to have done a long trip like that with him - she must have felt tremendous responsibility. I did laugh when he realised he'd lost his money belt and said "Shall I go back and see if it's at the hotel?" (or something similar) - did he think she was going to say no?

Whoever was fourth were also stranded by the typhoon at the end of one episode, but there was a massive gap I felt where nothing was explained and they were then at the checkpoint at the beginning of the next episode but Yin and Gaz were a long time behind them, let alone the leaders.

Yes, but they had already managed to get to the island before being stranded. Yin and Gaz had to wait for the ferries to run again.

They also went the wrong way on the train, so had a mountain to climb to get back on track, so I think they just gave up. Shame, I liked them and wanted to find out a bit more about them. I did the same thing in Lake Garda once. It was a bloody nightmare, as we missed the connection to Rome!

Yes I agree with all of this. It looked like she dumped him because the marriage was over and had moved on, but he was still clinging on and wanted to get back with her but she was desperately trying to find him a girlfriend! I mean, surely she shouldn't have moved in with him and done this with him, but maybe she feels she needs the support of someone who's known her for a long time, and its his lookout if he's still in love with her.

Also agree re Sioned. Shes onto a loser there but still seems determined to marry him.

Ah!! I thought they were also stuck on the mainland. That makes sense then.

These episodes in China, I have the feeling that it was all heavily overseen by the Chinese government. Remember in previous series how they weren't allowed to film there?

The production company have obviously kept pushing and Chinese officialdom has said OK, but we set the agenda. Everywhere they go is pretty and sanitised and touristy. Hong Kong was avoided, when it is such a huge destination in Southern China, probably because of the democracy protests in recent years. And this episode travelling west they were clearly in Tibet - the mountain plateau, the monastery with the little flags, the yaks wandering the streets, yet the name Tibet was not mentioned at all.

Shame on the BBC for pandering to the Chinese government. It's dishonest and not a true picture of contemporary China.

Gutted that Yin and Gaz are out, they were very likeable and my favourites. I thought it would be Caroline and Tom, and I am not warming to them somehow. Not sure who I want to win now.

I'm looking forward to this tonight. I think it's the only thing on terrestrial TV that I find remotely interesting at the moment.

I really like Sioned, she's obviously an intelligent/academic person and I'd love for this to make her realise that she can do so much more that just get married, have babies and stay in a Welsh village her whole life, there's so much more out there for her, I'm not sure that Fin is the answer...

She could do with moving out of Wales for a while, maybe going to a Uni in a city or similar to see what 'else' there is.

I don't think they were in Tibet in episode 3. John Hannah said the checkpoint was Shangri-La in Yunnan Province "on the edge of the Tibetan plateau". Yunnan borders Tibet. He also called the city a "frontier city".

I think they were right on the border with Tibet but didn't actually go there.

Ah, maybe you're right then. It did look very like Tibet though, similar buildings, landscape etc. And Tibet wasn't mentioned, I assume because the Chinese government just claims it's part of China.

Apparently Tibetans make up about 35% of the population in Diqong, Yunnan Province (where Shangri-La is), and buildings have a Tibetan flavour.

Shangri-La city seems to be made up of a few towns and villages which together are called a city, rather than what we would think of as a city.

However, I'm interested in their route to Nepal. If they head directly west they would go through Tibet. There is also the tricky area of India called Arunachal Pradesh which has a disputed border with China. Tibet also once laid claim to it. Other than these two routes, there is one through Myanmar to reach India.

I wonder how this area will be tackled!