Race Throughout the World winner Alfie Watts on ‘genuine journey’

Final 12 months, Alfie Watts went international, turning into the youngest ever winner of Race Throughout the World – the BBC present that does precisely what it says on the tin.

Groups of two race to get from one a part of the world to a different with no air journey, no smartphones, no financial institution playing cards and a restricted money finances.

After 50 days spent travelling by land and sea from Japan to Indonesia alongside his St Albans schoolfriend Owen Wooden, all of it got here right down to a foot race by a seashore off the island of Lombok.

The sequence 4 finale noticed the pair pip mom and daughter duo Eugenie and Isabel by a mere eight minutes to take the title and £20,000 prize pot.

It additionally noticed Alfie catch the journey bug, sending him on his solution to a brand new profession as a journey guru and on-line content material creator.

As sequence 5 of the present will get underway on Wednesday, BBC Information speaks to the 21-year-old about his new life on the highway, recommendation for fellow travellers and suggestions for this 12 months’s contestants on learn how to win the present.

“The entire expertise [on the show] type of opened my eyes to actual journey,” Watts tells us over a video name from Portugal, whereas taking a break from refereeing a soccer match.

“I feel there are positively two several types of journey that we’re used to within the UK; shallow journey, as I might name it, the place you go on vacation and also you see what you wish to see and also you keep inside your consolation zone or resort.

“After which I might say there’s actual genuine journey whereby you see the world because it really is.

“And I’ve simply discovered that I really a lot want the authenticity of locations… slightly than the climate.”

Watts’s major recommendation for readers with an analogous wanderlust is to think about travelling additional afield.

“Flights to Spain in the summertime may be £300 return, however you will be paying extraordinarily excessive costs for meals, lodging and issues like that,” he notes.

“Whereas, really, should you go slightly bit additional afield, should you strive Malaysia, Thailand, even Brazil, for positive the flights may be £600-700 however once you’re really there, you are spending £20-25 a day most.”

Since his large TV win, he is been to round 30 international locations, together with 5 in someday for a Europe-based on-line problem.

One other time he discovered and boarded the most cost effective doable flights he might discover on-line for seven days straight.

And he additionally returned to Japan to pay a invoice he felt he owed for some Kobe beef steaks that had been kindly donated to him and Owen without spending a dime once they had been frightened about their finances, as followers of the present will keep in mind. “That was a very nice second,” he says.

Watts likes to journey solo as he enjoys his “personal firm” and doing issues on his “personal phrases”, whereas additionally assembly new folks.

He acknowledges that it is not for everybody, and that some folks want to be away with family and friends, however he desires to encourage would-be travellers to “throw your self in”.

“I do not do issues that might put me at risk as a result of I feel I’ve a accountability to the people who comply with me,” he says.

He does admit although that he as soon as ended up in a taxi with an armed authorities official in Venezuela – a rustic he travelled to in opposition to UK goverment steerage.

“That was about as wacky because it acquired.”

His favorite place he has been on his travels to date is “no doubt” Angel Falls in Venezuela, whereas his favorite nation could be a coin flip between Jordan and Malaysia.

One factor he’d nonetheless wish to tick off his bucket checklist is visiting the distant island of Tuvalu within the South Pacific Ocean, which appears like a pitch for a brand new TV present in itself.

“It is the least visited nation on this planet,” he explains.

“Just one,500 folks go there yearly. It’s extremely troublesome to get to, very costly to get to.”

In addition to turning into much better travelled, the previous 12 months has additionally seen him broaden his horizons in different methods, appearing as an envoy for Younger Minds UK, a psychological well being charity for younger folks, and Winston’s Want, a youngsters and younger folks’s grief charity.

Some of the heart-rending moments of sequence 4 was when it was revealed that Watts’s mum had died of most cancers when he was only a little one.

Talking of his ambassadorial work, he says: “I adore it and I am so glad that I get to have the chance [to help].

“However internalising it, it may be fairly difficult, listening to folks’s tales.”

Race Throughout the World resumes on Wednesday, with a brand new raft of contestants heading this time from north jap China to the southernmost tip of India.

They embrace ex-spouses Gaz and Yin, and present couple Fin and Sioned, in addition to sisters Elizabeth and Letitia, brothers Brian and Melvyn and mom and son duo Caroline and Tom.

The principles, as common, aren’t any good telephones, no financial institution playing cards (only a small money finances) and no air journey.

Watts thinks it’ll be a “actually robust route” and “a topsy turvey” sequence.

“China could be very straightforward to get round however very exhausting to speak,” he stresses from private expertise. “And a variety of China does not settle for money anymore.”

His “primary piece of recommendation” for anybody participating is to be taught from his errors and take a calculator and a whiteboard. “We needed to borrow notebooks and God is aware of what else”.

He’d additionally recommend taking “little journey placards” with footage of buses, trains and folks on, for ease of communication.

“I feel now there’s increasingly more sequence, individuals are watching it and beginning to suppose, ‘really, that is the place they are going improper. That is how we could be artistic round it’.

“And I feel we’re in all probability going to see that this sequence, that folks have been much more streetwise with how they’ve ready.”

Is he frightened about shedding his title because the present’s youngest winner?

He replies, like a real worldwide diplomat, that he simply desires the pair who “properly work together” with the others and “who genuinely admire the chance to journey” to win.

“I feel these are at all times the folks that you simply wish to do finest, and if that occurs to be the 2 18-year-olds this time, then I will be comfortable handy my crown over.”