Celebrity Race Across the World series 1
[2] On 27 July 2023, the BBC announced that the delayed celebrity version would air later that same year and revealed a route spanning 24 countries and over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) starting in Marrakech, Morocco and finishing in Tromsø, Norway.
Celebrity Race Across the World had been planned for broadcast on 13 September 2023; however, the BBC announced its postponement due to the earthquakes in Marrakesh, where the show had been filmed prior to the disaster which killed over 2,500 people.
Colour key: The checkpoints in the first celebrity series were: Having checked in at Medersa Ben Yousseff, the race started in earnest at 2 pm from Jemaa el-Fnaa in Marrakesh, Morocco with the first leg finishing 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) north at Quinta De La Rosa, outside the town of Pinhão, in the heart of Portugal's Douro Valley.
Harry and Emma also elected to experience local culture and selected a homestay with a Jebala family, working at their apiary in the city of Chefchaouen in the Rif mountains in exchange for free food and lodgings.
With differing opinions on the best strategy, Alex and Noel were the last to leave Marrakesh having spent the first day exploring the city and eventually took an overnight bus to Tangier some seven hours behind Melanie and Helene.
The race continued on day 6 from Pinhão in Portugal's Douro Valley to the coastal town of Bonifacio, over 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) east on the southern tip of the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean.
They then travelled directly to Madrid as did Billy and Bonny, albeit on different bus services; however, Alex and Noel detoured to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia first for a work opportunity in a seafood restaurant.
Having failed to catch any squid and therefore with no extra funds, Billy and Bonny decided on economy over speed and took a bus from Barcelona to Marseille, instead of the much quicker but much costlier train which Harry and Emma had utilised after taking in the city's Gaudi buildings including the Sagrada Familia.
The race continued on day 11 from the coastal town of Bonifacio on the southern tip of the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean to car-free Zermatt, high in the Swiss Alps situated 900 kilometres (560 mi) to the north.
With three teams leaving on the rest day of Sunday, the lack of public transport forced Billy & Bonny and Harry & Emma to each take taxis to the port of Bastia, whilst Melanie and Helene eventually hitched a lift.
After departing Bonifacio a day later than the other three teams, Alex and Noel also opted for a cab to Bastia to make up time and took the first ferry available to the European mainland, which made port in Livorno.
Billy and Bonny took a trip to explore the Grotte de Choranche cave system in the Vercors Massif before heading onward to Annecy, where they discovered there were no trains to Geneva that day due to industrial action, a predicament that Melanie and Helene also found themselves facing.
Whilst the former team whiled away the hours to the next bus service by exploring the town, the latter took the opportunity to work in an ecocamp in the Semnoz forest for free board with a view to catching a train the next morning.
With an eye on their budget, Billy and Bonny decided to head to Italy where they hoped the high frequency and low cost of rail transport would give them an advantage, both in making up time and preserving their remaining funds.
They spotted a lucrative work opportunity, weeding at the Giusti Gardens in Verona and boarded a train headed for the Italian city, but a late arrival meant they earned less than anticipated.
With Harry feeling under the weather, the pair embarked on a 19 hour, overnight coach ride to the Split on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, which was prolonged due to a punctured tyre.
With no buses onward to Sarajevo that same day, they opted to work as deckhands on a superyacht before crossing the Dinaric Alps into Bosnia and Herzegovina by coach the following morning, but not before Emma had a word with her son about his timekeeping.
Leaving simultaneously, Billy, Bonny, Alex and Noel parted ways, with the younger duo taking a 15-hour night bus directly to Germany and the Bavarian city of Munich for a job opportunity in a bierkeller, whilst the senior pair struck out for a village called Pusztaszer on the Southern Great Plain of Hungary to work as farm hands in exchange for bed and board.
Last to leave Sarajevo, Melanie and Helene, followed in the footsteps of the race leaders Harry and Emma by selecting the road route to Budapest via Belgrade, albeit some ten and a half hours later, but with the minor bonus of not incurring accommodation costs that night.
Once in Munich itself they departed straight for Berlin by high-speed rail, whereas Billy and Bonny had strategically decided to head out of Germany and into the Czech Republic to its capital Prague in an attempt to preserve funds; a city that also featured as a waypoint in the travel plans of Alex and Noel once they had reached Budapest from the farm.
A family emergency meant that Billy and Bonny had pulled out of the race to return home instead of journeying from Berlin to the island city of Tromsø in the Arctic Circle, some 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) to the north.
Meanwhile, Melanie and Helene opted to travel through the Baltic states with their first port of call being Tallinn, capital of Estonia, where they then secured free passage on a ferry across the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki by working in the duty-free shop on board the vessel.
At the cathedral further instructions told the teams to take the Fjellheisen cable car to the finish line at the upper station's observation deck overlooking Tromsoya island.
Anita Singh of The Telegraph awarded the opening episode 4 stars out of 5, stating "The stakes are lower when celebrities are involved, rather than members of the public, but it is still an enjoyable show because the format is so strong.
