Cheap doesn't nessesarily mean they're good. Well, you'll most probably be OK if you ride UK-s smooth roads with ANY kind of shock. Dampening characteristics on Wilbers designed shocks is relatively good, but I wouldn't recommend travelling third-world with loaded bike on Wilbers shocks, especially if you often like riding your bike offroad.
Mine
rear Wilbers failed over 5 times doing that (OEM rear had worked for 80Kkm by the time I left home, OEM front still works @ 113K). Looks like the main issue are the materials and design on Wilbers (lower price payoffs?). Capped type of canister (i.e. Öhlins makes pressurized canister in 1-piece, more expensive to make, a bit heavier, but considerably more reliable and stronger design imho), too small diameter piston rod (smaller sealing force per surface area) and the coating of the rod is one of the worst quality on all makers I've seen so far. Mine got polished spots on coating already after 10Kkm of riding (= pissing oil), while Öhlins had canister cap fallen down after huge bottoming out, and I rode with loose cap shaking-scratching the rod over 10Kkm - NOT A SINGLE scratch on the coating and absolutely no polished spots after almost 20Kkm. The cap material proved to be considerably softer than the coating = vastly better coating quality than Wilbers IMHO.
The problem with R850/1100/1150GS bikes is that the shock is too hidden-covered into the chassis = bad airflow and cooling. Overheated shock is one of the main issues on oilheads (i.e. on hexa-heads (the 1200s), they have much more air flow to the rear shock, so it's a big improvement over oilheads in terms of proper design)
And about cooling on Wilbers - another design flaw is that the canister cap is of a closed type, with just a screwdriver hole to open it = poor cooling for the seal. Öhlins has 3 big venting holes in the cap placed at every 120 degrees - I think that's the key reason why Öhlins shock still works w/o any leak while it has recieved more abuse than my Wilbers ever did here in South-America.
Öhlins hasn't proven itself 100% reliable too I must point out. One design flaw on Öhlins shocks seems to be the preloading mechanism that uses o- profile ring seal instead of a rectangular or an x-ring that would sound much more logical for me. Using simple o-ring means it's more prone for dirt to penetrate onto moving surfaces, and less stable sealing of the pressurized oil in the preloader (i.e. on x-profile seal the sealing properties improve with the pressure). Our preloader has leaked empty 2 times, but this hasn't stopped us going forward - you can manually lift all the preload mechanism down yourself to get the correct preload. The shock itself works, which is a miracle compared to Wilbers.
Forget the Wilbers 5-year warranty on South-America - only 1 dealer per vast S-Am! I just threw mine away in the end, I never got it to work for more than 1000 kilometers till it pissed all the oil out again.
Just my 2c about my experience with the shocks in extremely hard conditions.
so - not something i'm going to lose any sleep over..
the only rough stuff i would do is the odd dirt track and across a field to a camp site so going by what tossers say about wilbers i am not anticipating any problems best of luck with the remainder of your trip,
)) problems, if you were doing it all again knowing what you know now, what shocks would you fit?
just got to work out how i am going to talk my way out of this one 
i have wore out the 'it makes the bike safer to ride my little peach' i am in deep do do if this goes wrong she will have me g.s. on here for sale cos i'll be dead so you b@stards better pay a fair price
some days i hate wimmin
out on sunday.
