BBC Two has ordered a 7-part series as Si King and Dave Myers journey down the west coast of the UK.
Hairy Bikers Go West will see the pair head from Scotland to Devon, taking in Lancashire, Merseyside, North Wales and Bristol.
The food adventure will feature local specialities ranging from Chicken Balmoral with truffle mash and a poached lobster served with Scottish Bucatini pasta, to a Lancashire Butter and Potato Pie.
It will be more emotional for the pair, as Dave Myers continues to receive treatment for cancer. The chef, from Barrow in Furness, was diagnosed last year and was forced to take a break from filming.
“Dave is a west coast lad and we had a blast visiting some of his old haunts and our favourite places. Our focus, and particularly Dave’s focus, was to get out on the bike, to start the process of filming and to bring a level of normality back for him, his family, for me, for the crew, and that’s what he worked towards and that’s what got him through that particular portion of his treatment,” said Si King.
“It was so joyous because it’s Dave’s neck of the woods, it was great to visit some old haunts that we’d frequented both prior to the bikers as well as during the numerous series we’ve produced together. There was a lovely moment on the first day of filming where Dave overtook me on the road on the bikes and it was great, it was like ‘aw he’s back’. It was just like old times and over the comms he was going ‘Kingy, are you sure we’re going left here?’. That sort of dialogue was great and it’s what we’ve done over the last 20 years. It was really quite emotional.”
King added that this series felt like going down memory lane.
“It’s always quite nostalgic because you always go ‘god, can you remember the last time we were here’, that’s just the very nature of travel when you go back to places. It doesn’t necessarily mean to say that you go back to those specific places but every single part of the country has its own character and personality and feel to it. What was lovely is, as always on the bikers, it’s the people that make it and their characters and personalities because it’s defined by the landscape in which they live.
“The east coast is different to the west, the north is different to the south, but the difference it always great fun and important. I’d forgotten that in Lancashire particularly you’ll see this really innocuous bungalow and at the back of it is 40 acres of some dude growing tomatoes. The market garden in that part of the world just blows me away. It always has but you can sometimes forget these things. There’s a guy who has tomatoes in hot houses and he supplies all the Michelin-starred restaurants and he literally lives in a tiny bungalow. That happened time and time again. There was a gingerbread manufacturer who produced the old-fashioned gingerbread of that area, there’s that social history the community is still trying to maintain which is enormously important because it’s something for communities to hold on to in this modern world. It’s a sense of identity, a sense of place, and who they are as a community and where they fit in the wider world.”
King added that the episode in the North West was particularly important.
“The landscapes defines you and Dave is definitely a Lancashire lad, albeit Cumbria, because they changed the boundaries. I think he identifies pretty strongly with both, it was really emotionally in the sense that Dave was incredibly nostalgic about his parents and about his life in Lancashire as a young boy, and him leaving for university in London.
“We talk a lot about going to Lancaster University to watch gigs. Dave was massively, as I am, into his music so it was great that he went to gigs there – it was all that sort of craic. Rediscovering the food but on camera was brilliant. Also, to see how the food scene had moved to see how very important it is. Moor Hall springs to mind, a remarkable restaurant and hotel, the produce is extremely seasonal and it’s all from the garden which is immaculate. Everything from a burger all the way through to two Michelin stars was wonderful, Lancashire has a very strong presence in the food scene.”
The Hairy Bikers Go West is on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on Tuesday 6 February at 7pm.
