Freddie Flintoff takes to the Rainforest for Sky

Sky LogoRoad Through The Rainforest with Freddie Flintoff is a two part special for Sky 1.

Former cricketer and TV personality Flintoff has embarked on the cycling challenge of a lifetime. Together with author, journalist and cyclist Rob Penn the pair have taken on an epic journey into the dark heart of the Amazon along a section of the world’s most controversial mega-road: Brazil’s Trans-Amazonian Highway.

My daughter’s passion for saving the rainforest combined with a hard-core physical test was too good an offer to turn down. Cycling the Amazon Rainforest was a tough challenge but I hope what Rob and I have done can make a small difference and help raise awareness of the need to protect this amazing place. – Freddie Flintoff

The factual documentary will chart how along the way they encountered an extraordinary range of people, places and situations  – with a focus on raising awareness of the heightened threat of deforestation. The result will be a dangerous, dramatic, entertaining, hair-raising, and thought-provoking voyage of discovery through one of the world’s most enigmatic regions, during a time of unprecedented change.

Travelling along a major section of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, Freddie and Rob cross pristine rainforest and indigenous territories as well as burgeoning towns and sprawling ranches – crossing wildly different social, physical and economic landscapes, deep into the heart of the diverse cultures and communities that personify them – and coming face to face with the full range of issues facing this region. However, this is no tourist route: it is a genuinely dangerous journey too. Only partially paved, huge sections of the road turn into quagmire after rain, and then to a dirt track with the world’s deepest potholes once dry.

Sky’s commitment to saving the rainforest is to be admired and I’m thrilled to be a part of [it]. As a relative newcomer to the world of cycling, Freddie more than showed his mettle in the tough conditions of the Amazon and it really was the journey of a lifetime. – Rob Penn

The two hour long editions will air in early 2014 on Sky 1 and Sky 1 HD.