Race Across the World winners: ‘We didn't realise people might judge us for being posh'

Telegraph

a day ago

It's been an epic journey over some of the most spectacular landscapes on earth. The contestants have raced 8,760 miles across Asia, from the Great Wall in northeastern China to the southernmost tip of India, via the Himalayan peaks of Nepal.
They've taken bullet trains, boats and bus journeys over vertiginous mountain passes; they've hot-footed it through back streets to find 'chakkdu' motorbike taxis. And now after eight weeks, the fifth series of BBC One's Race Across the World has its winners, mother and son team Caroline Bridge and her 21-year-old son Tom.
It's quite the turnaround; they finished the first leg a country mile behind the leaders, with elimination looming. The pressures of the race told almost immediately as Tom broke down in tears after they'd spent 24 hours trying to arrange transport out of Beijing and got nowhere. 'It's never really happened to me before,' he tells me when I catch up with them the morning after the finale. 'When I had a little cry because we couldn't get our tickets… that never happens. Normally, if I can't get a ticket, I'll find another way around it.'
He wasn't the only one affected, though. 'The lowest point for me was, I think, when we came into the first checkpoint,' Caroline says. 'Because I'd been running with the rucksack on my back, going, 'Come on, Thomas, every second counts.' And of course, when we got there, we were over a day behind. So it all seemed so pointless. I put my rucksack down and I absolutely wept. But it possibly was the making of us as well.'
'I think it's what we needed,' Tom agrees. 'If we'd started well, we would have thought, 'Oh, we're good at this. We're fine.' It was tough, but good to have to say, 'You need to get your a--e in gear, because this obviously isn't working.''
They're back in the familiar countryside of Suffolk. Home is a converted barn in a small village near Bury St Edmunds. 'It's in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by green trees and a stream, a country lane, and fields,' Tom tells me.
'We've just downsized from a small farm,' Caroline adds. 'That was one of the other reasons to go on the race, because it had actually been a particularly bad year for us. I didn't have a horse any more, and I had to have my dog put down. It was the most opportune moment.'
We got fleeting mentions of Caroline's husband and Tom's father, Christian Bridge, in the show. He is not a global backpacker by nature, it turns out. 'Dad is a bit more of a luxurious traveller, shall we say – like a cruise or going to Vegas,' Tom says. 'You'd never catch Dad with a backpack.'
And Caroline has a horse again now. She's an amateur event rider, who has won several titles over the years, which may explain her strong competitive streak. 'I wanted to win as well as experience the race,' she admits. (It was Caroline who talked Tom into applying for the show.)
At one point, she forced Tom to choose between a bus (the cheap option) and a taxi (for speed). He went for the taxi because he knew how much winning would mean to his mother. 'I'm very frugal and I wasn't going to spend the money,' she admits. He nods with recognition at the word 'frugal'. 'I wasn't allowed to eat. It was awful.'
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Of course, we've got to know all of the contestants well over the past eight weeks, and each duo has seen highs and lows. Retired business owner Brian and his elder brother Melvyn proved game for anything in their 60s, and will no doubt look back and laugh about the time that Brian got to work shovelling buffalo dung with his bare hands to earn extra travel money.
Former spouses Yin and Gaz were eliminated early, but surely won't forget the experience of digging for lotus roots in flooded fields. Sisters Letitia and Elizabeth explored the Taj Mahal and went to an Indian wedding. Teenagers Fin and Sioned swapped life in a tiny Welsh village for a sometimes overwhelming introduction to the wider world – but found peace in a detour to a national park before being engulfed by the clamour of the subcontinent.
We also witnessed Tom gain in confidence and resilience as the series unfolded. He had been expelled from school, we learnt, for smoking cannabis. 'It made me kind of feel like I was never really going to amount to much,' he says, 'because I think you're always taught at a young age that to do well in life, you have to go to school, then you do A-levels, then you go to uni, and then you get a job. Travelling has helped me realise that, especially, in today's world, you don't need any of that. If you're good with people, and you can chat to them and you're friendly, it can take you a long way.'
Caroline, meanwhile, was surprised when she found herself opening up about how 20 years of being a stay-at-home mum had left her feeling. 'I didn't value myself at all,' she told Tom in a quiet moment, as the cameras rolled. 'Whilst I was useful at home and very loved, I felt I didn't have any value apart from that.'
'I felt like I was sort of fading away,' she tells me now. 'I knew Thomas would be moving out. And I just thought, 'Well, what is there for me?''
'I didn't intend anything to come out like that,' she says. 'I'm quite a private person, and at my age, I'm not used to sharing on social media, but with the relentless travel and the tiredness and the trust you have in your crew, you just feel that it's time for it to come out. There's no mask to hide behind any more: you're dirty, you've got no make-up, there's no home comforts. And you think, 'I have nothing to hide. This how I feel. My son's here to support me, and it is the essence of me, and it is the truth.''
The show restored her self-belief, and a much more carefree woman emerged – one who whooped with glee as she leant out of a moving train near Mumbai. Tom also found himself talking openly about how cerebral palsy has affected what he can do with his right hand.
'I've had it all my life, and if there's something I can't do, I'll work around it or try and cover it up,' he says. 'I was a bit worried that it would kind of define me and I never wanted it to. And then in the race, there was a time where it became apparent…' On a home stay with an Indian family, he was expected to eat with his right hand, according to custom. 'I couldn't really cover it up, so I had to explain it.' In that moment, he admits, 'I didn't really enjoy talking about it.'
But later in the series, he says, when he got work with a carpet weaver, he found himself volunteering the information for the first time and, seeing how simply it was accepted, changed his feelings about it. 'I'd built up this wall in my own head,' he says. 'Now I've had so many messages from people who have similar things, and they found it really helpful, and knowing that I've done that just by talking about it makes you feel so much better. I'm not really shy about it any more.'
One message from a family friend saying how much it had helped even made him cry. 'I think everyone needs to just start sharing stuff, because it takes such a weight off your shoulders.' He's even investing some of his winnings in a small business with a friend – selling hand-woven rugs from that very workshop. Caroline bought him the one that he'd worked on in the show for his 22 nd birthday. She is 61.
In some ways, they're not the type of contestants we're used to seeing on BBC reality shows these days… too 'privileged' by half… did they worry that viewers might turn against them for being 'posh'?
'I wasn't, and I didn't realise I would be viewed that way,' Caroline says, 'because being judged by how you speak is no better or worse than being judged by how you look or your colour or your height or anything else. But actually, you are a subject to prejudice because of that, and you're put in a box, which is a shame. I can't change it, and I'm not embarrassed by it, as it's me.'
'I thought that that was going to be the case, just because I know that's what social media is like,' Tom admits. 'And I was just hoping that people would look a bit deeper and see that we are just exactly the same as anybody else.'
In fact, all the contestants have become firm friends since the series ended. 'We're meeting up again shortly, they are the loveliest people,' Caroline says. Even the camera crew who travelled with them have stayed in touch. 'There are times where you just think, 'Oh, for goodness sake, why is this camera in my face right now?'' confesses Tom. 'But it's all part of the fun. And we got this experience of a lifetime, so it's all worth it.'