When was pole to pole filmed

There is something about that first moment, that moment of surprise and wonder. It was the first time I went to the US. For people such as myself, brought up in the 40s and 50s, the US was the golden land, the land of plenty, the land from which music and film stars came and everything was exciting and fresh, modern and new. I felt so frustrated with not being able to go there.

It was in that I managed to put together enough money from my earnings from Monty Python to go on a special trip across the US with Terry Jones. The actual finances were very, very tight, so we had to sleep in cheap hotels. Monty Python was just beginning to catch on in the US, not widely, but there was a wonderful lady who represented us on behalf of a record company. She got us on to the Johnny Carson show in Los Angeles. I remember it all fell a bit flat.

I discovered the west coast of Scotland, which I think is still one of the most remarkably beautiful places, when we were doing Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

We would travel up on the train, leaving Euston and the crowded south-east corner of England and end up in the morning at a station called Bridge of Orchy, which was surrounded by waving grass as far as you could see.

Then we would drive down through Rannoch Moor, which is as bleak and wild and romantic a place as you could imagine in the British Isles, and then into Glen Coe itself with extraordinary mountains on either side. The west coast of Scotland combines the most beautiful scenery with a sort of accessibility. I met a wonderful man called Hamish MacInnes, who was a famous mountain climber, but quite eccentric and rather unorthodox in nature.

He was very helpful to us while we were filming. He would throw these dummies high in the air and into a gorge 2,ft below. I always thought that was rather wonderful for someone who was head of mountain rescue.

A lot more detail than Around the World in 80 Days. You know what you're getting with the Palin books. It is hardly extreme adventure stuff but great for observational and historical content.

Aug 22, Laurel Kristick rated it it was amazing Shelves: travelogues. A fantastic travelogue I first read over 10 years ago. This time I'm listening to the audiobook - Michael Palin narrates his book beautifully.

Oct 28, E rated it really liked it. Michael Palin writes a mean book but tapes a better show. So good I wanted to watch it but sadly not on streaming and will have to wait for disk. Jun 18, Richard Bartholomew rated it really liked it Shelves: travel. While Michael Palin managed to cross the globe west-to-east in 80 days, it took him twice as long to cover not much more than half that distance not including a brief but significant detour north-to-south.

The former adventure was a race against the clock; and while there is some urgency in Pole to Pole, primarily due to the need to catch the S. Agulhas from Cape Town to Antarctica, the trek has more the feel of a long-haul feat of endurance than a sprint.

Palin finally limped to the finish While Michael Palin managed to cross the globe west-to-east in 80 days, it took him twice as long to cover not much more than half that distance not including a brief but significant detour north-to-south. Palin finally limped to the finish line with a broken rib, "disturbingly gaunt Palin is as amiable as ever, his commentary gently amusing but also thoughtful, but each day's account, as with 80 Days reviewed here , is impressionistic.

The upshot is something of a congenial but uneven travel miscellany, in which the two poles serve as MacGuffins and bits of Europe and Asia Minor constitute an extended prologue for a book that is almost two-thirds about Africa. Palin travelled through the USSR not long before its demise, and it is easy to forget now how unforeseen that was at the time: independence for Ukraine is "not going to happen very fast", a Ukrainian filmmaker named Vadim Castelli tells him in Zlobin, en route for Kiev.

Reading the book in also reminds us of just how close in time was to some earlier historical events that now seem A Long Time Ago: villages in Ukraine are still being evacuated in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster; a hotel owner at Wadi Halfa in Sudan recalls the creation of Lake Nasser in "the waters came at night… pushed down the houses" ; Haile Selassie's pet lion "lingers on" miserably in a cage in Ethiopia, "an embarrassment, one feels, to almost everybody"; and in Zimbabwe, relics of the name "Salisbury" can still be detected under Tippex on an official notice.

There is also a sense of Africa in cultural flux. In Zambia Palin has a disturbing encounter with a Zairean witchdoctor in the process of denouncing a man as a warlock "two young men — boys really — step forward, and with grubby razor blades make incisions on his neck and shoulder" , but the same country is graced by "Saddam Hussein Boulevard" and a colonial-era country estate: "English country life endures" at Shiwa, where Palin stays with Lorna Harvey, the daughter of Sir Stewart Gore-Brown, and her husband David this was just months before their murder, as noted in the book's Afterword.

The meeting with the witchdoctor, a certain "Dr Baela", had an adverse effect on Palin: Baela claimed that Palin had a "shadow", and prescribed some powdered tree-bark; Palin fell ill shortly afterwards and in what seems to have been semi-delirium found himself thinking "I should never have had anything to do with Baela's world. We don't understand it and we should have left it alone. However, for me, the most ominous note the book is when Palin meets a British journalist living in Ethiopia: the writer "has a well-researched theory that the Ark of the Covenant is held in a chapel not far from here, and he has just completed a book on his findings.

Jan 26, Andrew Foxley rated it it was amazing. After the tremendous success of Michael Palin's 'Around the World In 80 Days' TV series and accompanying book, a follow up felt inevitable - and so, in , Palin and his BBC team set out on an even more epic journey, this one to travel from the North Pole to the South Pole, via a route that includes Scandinavia, the former Soviet Union shortly before its collapse as it turned out , eastern Europe and through the heart of Africa.

Whilst the focus of '80 Days' was very much on getting from A to After the tremendous success of Michael Palin's 'Around the World In 80 Days' TV series and accompanying book, a follow up felt inevitable - and so, in , Palin and his BBC team set out on an even more epic journey, this one to travel from the North Pole to the South Pole, via a route that includes Scandinavia, the former Soviet Union shortly before its collapse as it turned out , eastern Europe and through the heart of Africa.

Whilst the focus of '80 Days' was very much on getting from A to B, 'Pole to Pole' is a much more interesting and successful volume as Palin is able to experience something of the places he's visiting.

That's not to say the journeying from place to place isn't interesting - the long and difficult trek through Africa is particularly fascinating, as there are seldom proper roads in the sense we'd think of them, and they're passing through countries in states of great upheaval where there's the potential for real danger along the way. Palin makes even the most grim and inhospitable environments come to life, and the whole thing is told with good humour and an eye for the absurd.

I had read and enjoyed this years ago, but I loved it just as much revisiting it this time. Wonderful stuff. Aug 22, Max Tachis rated it it was amazing. Palin, with the aid of history, puts together one of the finest travel diaries I've ever read. The overall goal to travel from the North Pole to the South Pole along a longitude of 30 degrees East when possible is, admittedly, a less recognizably sexy pitch than his previous release.

But with Palin's trademark wit and his truly immersive, grounded style of writing, the adventure ends up being far more interesting and enlightening than "Around the World in 80 Days" This, as stated above, is aided Palin, with the aid of history, puts together one of the finest travel diaries I've ever read.

But with Palin's trademark wit and his truly immersive, grounded style of writing, the adventure ends up being far more interesting and enlightening than "Around the World in 80 Days" This, as stated above, is aided by history itself, more-so than the travel alone. I don't want to give all the events away though, they are history Which means, in a lot of ways, the perspective and outlook Palin shares with us of those communities in turmoil, just before the boiling point, will never be seen again.

The world moved on in the wake of Palin's journey and it's utterly captivating to experience. I, too, am moving on to Palin's next; "Full Circle"! Apr 11, Rebecca rated it really liked it Shelves: Really enjoyed listening to this as an audio book, Micheal Palin is an excellent story teller. This is really my first time experiencing Micheal Palin's travel-based stories, and I'm delighted to have found something so unique and humourous.

I don't have much to say about this in terms of a review, but if you are at all interested in travel and Micheal Palin as a person I only knew him previously from Monty Python , then I recommend this book. It's an easy listen and will perhaps give you an in Really enjoyed listening to this as an audio book, Micheal Palin is an excellent story teller. It's an easy listen and will perhaps give you an insight into the world before your time. This television series which I will now watch with great interest , was filmed in - a year before I was born.

Micheal Palin travels through the Soviet union mere days before it collapses, and through South Africa during the end of Apartheid. These are things that I have never experienced, so it's interesting to see the world in a different perspective. I can certainly imagine that if Micheal Palin repeated this exact route today, his experiences would be markedly different. That's the wonder of the world we live in.

May 12, Billy Gunn rated it really liked it Shelves: expedition , journals-and-diaries , travelogue , non-fiction.

One of the big 3. Each of these books contain a epic journey an expedition in to the unknown. Each of these written and experienced when the world felt a lot bigger and travel took days and weeks rather than hours. He and his crew took to local public transport to complete most of these trips, which has resulted in some very funny, frustrating and quirky happenings. He has written many other travel books and each are good.

But the first three when there were no Internet, Sat-nav and devices with apps really felt like a trip into the unknown. If you enjoy travel writing, books on expeditions like Ranulph Fiennes. These are really worth a read! Love Palin's sense of humour and sense of adventure. He comes across as a very sensible man with both feet on the ground who is not in the least bit adverse to a bit of chaos and letting the world happen to him.

Curious coincidences are observed with a hint of wide eyed amazement but none-the-less taken in his stride as all part of a days work. His journeys have never been exotic freak shows, but celebrations of the human spirit in its many forms. Readers of Travelling for Work may, however, be surprised to discover just how difficult Palin found his new milieu. He worries about his diet and his deficiencies in sleep, but most of all he is tormented by self-doubt over his ability to make good documentary television.

He further wonders what some of his peers would have been able to make of the task. I think of seeing all this through Jonathan Miller's and Alan Bennett's and Terry Gilliam's eyes and how much sharper and more original it might all be. He finds being an "inquisitor" unnatural, admitting that he thinks of the camera as "an embarrassing intrusion", even at the end of the globetrotting journey. This makes it difficult to grab people and interrogate them. It is as well that he has always had Mills to do some people-grabbing for him, scouring the path ahead for interviewees whom Palin could "encounter", or discovering rituals for him to undergo, such as walking across hot embers in Estonia.

There's not a Turkish bath or hammam that you haven't been slapped or walloped in — or any medicinal mud that you haven't been smeared with. Mills was already a Bafta-winning film-maker when he began to work with Palin, and repeatedly told him, "I would never ask you to do anything I wouldn't do myself," which is why he didn't insist on Palin completing a bungee jump in New Zealand.

Despite the harsh judgement of Whicker, who called the series "a seven-hour ego trip", Around the World… was a triumph. Perhaps the viewers enjoyed seeing Palin squirm because he's so genial — and so successful. As he fretted over his travel work, he wondered whether it would undermine his acting career, even though A Fish Called Wanda, his Hollywood heist comedy with John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis, had recently been a box-office smash.

He need not have been concerned: as he returned to London on Around the World…, after an absence of 79 days and seven hours, his "profile at home had never been higher", he noted in one of the Alwych notebooks he used as a diary. Indeed, in the decade up to covered by Travelling for Work, Palin constantly pushed himself as an actor and a writer. He won critical acclaim for his role in Alan Bleasdale's TV drama GBH, wrote and starred in a film, American Friends, started writing a novel, Uganda, and even created a stage play, The Weekend which was panned by the critics.

As he travelled, family life went on. While he was away filming, his son, William, sat his Oxford exam, and his wife, Helen, underwent surgery for a tumour close to her brain. More Stories. Today's Best Discounts. Get us in your feed Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter.