Race Across the World (RATW) has returned for its fifth non-celebrity series. The show follows pairs of travellers as they race across, and between, countries with limited budgets and resources. This year they are covering 14,000km from the Great Wall of China to the southernmost tip of India.
To win the £20,000 prize, a duo must be the first to reach the destination, using any means of transportation other than air travel.
Getting to know the relationships between each set of contestants is part of the show’s appeal. A mix of friends, siblings, couples and parents travelling with their adult children take part. Typically, the experience seems to bring them closer and to offer a shared sense of achievement.
It has inspired adventurous families to follow in the participants’ footsteps with DIY trips. Here, four of them describe their own RATW-esque adventures.
Hannah Brenchley, a picture editor, has recently returned from a trip to Peru with her husband and two children – ten-year-old Alfie and eight-year-old Poppy.
“It was quite a tough holiday because we only had two weeks to cover the whole country – but it was definitely an adventure.”
Watching RATW, the children were inspired by the wildlife on show and the excitement of “getting on a bus and arriving in a different country”.
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The reality was quite different to their expectations, though.
“It starts off so exciting, but then you’re eight hours in and the children are asking what they can do,” says Hannah.
They travelled mostly on Peru Hop buses, a hop-on, hop-off service.
In the Amazon, they stayed in a jungle lodge and, while they weren’t fans of the “chicken tarantulas”, the Amazonian horned frogs and giant river otters were a hit.
It’s an affordable country, says Hannah: “cheaper than a holiday in Europe would have been.”
The only real downsides were having to pack so much into a short period – and the altitude sickness that came from not having enough time to acclimatise.
“If we’d had it slightly longer, it would have been less exhausting,” says Hannah, “but I would recommend it a hundred per cent.”
Four months of spontaneity in South America
Sarah Hepworth, a global health consultant from Surrey, her husband David and their two daughters, Chloe and Leila (eight and 10), have recently arrived home from an epic journey. Over four months, they covered vast swathes of Argentina, Chile, Easter Island, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.
Before setting off, they sat down as a family to watch series two of RATW, set in Central and South America, to give the girls an idea of what to expect.
Over four months, Sarah travelled across much of South America with her husband and their two daughters (Photo: supplied)Sarah was delighted that her daughters got to see so much first-hand: “We saw volcanoes and glaciers, icebergs and deserts and salt flats and mountains, and so much history at Machu Picchu and Easter Island.”
The family made few plans before they set off. All they had booked were return flights from the UK and flights to Easter Island for a festival in February.
“After that, we sort of just started making it up, working out where we wanted to go next.”
From the beginning, they threw themselves into the journey, starting with a 31-hour-long bus ride.
“Eventually, you get into a zone, and they become more tolerable,” says Sarah.
They spent about three or four nights in each place, sleeping in hostels, hotels and Airbnbs. They ate things they would never have eaten at home, from giant ants covered in edible flowers to cow’s tongues.
Despite the occasional hairy bus journey and slightly iffy accommodation, Sarah wholeheartedly recommends a similar trip to RATW fans.
“Spending that amount of time with your kids is actually quite rare,” she says.
“It’s such a brilliant thing for them to not be wrapped in cotton wool and know that they can do hard things.”
“It was my idea to do the trip,” says six-year-old Benji. He’s the son of Katie Cosstick, who works in PR, and, together with his father and nine-year-old brother Fraser, they embarked on an 11-day Interrailing adventure around Europe in the Easter holidays.
“After watching RATW, Benji decided to come up with his own route,” says Katie.
“The show captivated him and, eventually, we ran out of excuses not to do it.”
Six-year-old Benji helped his brother and parents plan their Interrailing trip around Europe (Photo: supplied)Eventually, working as a family, they came up with seven checkpoints as “must-sees”, while Fraser did research on what to do at each place: “it was mainly ice cream shops”.
They ended up taking 13 trains, one taxi, one plane and six trams and saw five countries “properly”, although Benji did get off the train in Austria to be able to say he had visited six.
They relied on travel website The Man in Seat 61 for information.
“It was spot on. We found out there’d been a landslide on part of our original route and the line was closed. The website recommended the Bernina Express as an alternative and it was a real highlight,” says Katie.
They particularly enjoyed the train journeys, including a 15-hour overnight ride from Prague to Brussels
“They were a really nice way for us to spend time together. We didn’t take any tablets [screens], so the boys looked out of the windows and saw so much stuff. They also had books, and we played a lot of cards. It was lovely.”
She has no regrets over their European adventure: “If it’s inspired them to have the confidence that one day they can do it on their own, then that’s what matters.”
The father-and-son racing team
Viktor Chalk is only 12 years old, but he’s already been to 39 countries. He visited many of them with his father, Dave, on trips with Lupine Travel, a company that offers RATW-style holidays.
So far, the father-and-son duo have travelled from London to finish lines in Istanbul and Tirana, Albania’s capital.
Around 150 people take part in each race. Ahead of time, they only know the destination and are told where the check points are on the day they begin.
Unlike the TV show, there are no budget constraints and participants can use their phones for research. Some savvy racers have Eurostar tickets booked out of London to the three main hubs of Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, to give them a head start, but the races can be done more cheaply.
Father and son duo Dave and Viktor are keen racers – and are planning their next adventure (Photo: supplied)About 75 per cent of people take the entire week allotted for each trip to complete the journey. At the end, everyone meets for a big party.
“It’s kind of like a little travelling community,” says Dave.
It’s possible to do it on a shoestring – one group travelled from London to Istanbul for £91, according to Viktor.
“It’s quite uncompetitive until it becomes competitive,” says Dave, referring to occasions when they’ve become unstuck, including a lost bus driver in Brussels, a late ferry in Bari, and a border official who didn’t believe their Jersey passports were real.
Dave and Viktor have seen RATW, but are not huge fans – “it’s a bit formulaic and produced,” they say. But they’re keen to apply when Viktor is old enough.
On his first trip, he won a prize for the fastest-finishing child, but he and Dave have yet to crack the top ten together.
Their next race is to Tallinn, and they are determined to finish among the fastest competitors.
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