BBC Hairy Bikers’ love affair with Scotland after living there for 15 years

The Hairy Bikers return to screens tonight for their new series The Hairy Bikers Go West.

The duo are making their way down the west coast of the UK for the BBC Two series, as the bike-riding celebrity chefs will journey to stunning seaside destinations and learn more about their restaurants and local recipes.

Scotland is set to play a major role as among the locations set to feature in the show are Dumfries and Galloway and the Isle of Bute in the Firth of Clyde.

Speaking ahead of the premiere of the series on February 6, King praised both locations and when asked about some of the best lesser-known destinations featured in The Hairy Bikers Go West, he commented: “The absolute beauty of Bute and the community there too.

“The Loch Arthur Camphill Community in Dumfries and Galloway, it fundamentally gives people a chance with learning difficulties to have a normal and functional life of contribution to their society. What a hidden gem that is, everything that the residents produce there is just off the scale, the cheese, the dairy, it’s just wonderful and such a beautiful thing.”

Meanwhile, the star singled out the west coast of Scotland as being among the best places in the UK “for the people, landscapes, and beef and dairy”.

But it should come as no surprise that the much-loved pair are fans of the cuisine and life north of the border as Dave lived in the Aberdeenshire town of Huntly for 15 years, as previously reported Aberdeen Live, where he worked as a makeup artist and ran an antiques shop, and still has plenty of pals.

Speaking on Kaye Adams’ BBC Radio Scotland show last November, he revealed his love for “brilliant” Scotland – and that his favourite spot in the country to go out on his bike is Glenelg in the Highlands.

He said: “I love Glenelg…the same mates I’ve got in Huntly, they go to Glenelg every year and I’ve been fortunate to get an invite to come and share their accommodation and on an occasion I’ve done it.

“Go up there mackerel fishing, down the pub. It’s so beautiful around there, such a lot of history…you can go over to Skye. Scotland’s brilliant.”

And speaking about the unexplored areas of Scotland that he knows quite well, he added: “Si used to ride it from Newcastle then we’d head off on the bikes up to the west coast of Scotland, like Stoer and Drumbeg and up near Cape Wrath and round there.

“We kind of made our way from Ullapool north. People forget there’s an awful awful lot of Scotland north of Ullapool. Even north of Inverness.”

Opening up to the BBC on returning to Dave’s old haunt, Si reflected on the early days of their friendship in Aberdeenshire. He said: “Dave was a makeup artist at the time and I had two young sons, and Dylan was about four weeks old when we piled up in the car to the caravan. Dave had one caravan and I had the other.

“We went fishing, caught a load of mackerel and thought ‘what the bloody Norah are we going to bloody do with this’, then cooked them and everyone had mackerel from the barbecue.

“It’s just time, that’s what you do as mates, you get together and have a good craic.

“It was lovely to revisit that energy and atmosphere.”

As part of their travels in the new show, the pair will travel to the Isle of Bute, where they will visit a local deli and learn about a patisserie owned and run by a Syrian family.

They will also investigate a project that aims to bring truffles back to Bute, and speak to the last remaining butcher on the island.

Speaking ahead of the scenes filmed down south in Galloway, Si highlighted one dish from the area as a “must-try”.

Bucatini is the name of a thick spaghetti-like pasta popular in Rome that has a hole running through its centre, and there is a Galloway version using local oats and wheat flour that he says is just as good.

He continued: “The Bucatini is a great product and it’s really tasty and it’s Scottish, it was beautifully done. The Chicken Balmoral is a lovely traditional recipe. It was inhaled rather than eaten by the crew.”

He added: “What we were trying to do is show how electric the food scene is. On the continent, there is still this odd attitude towards British food in the sense that they say ‘did you eat well?’.

“The food is fantastic, it’s of a high quality and mostly very beautifully cooked but there’s still that level of surprise, it’s bizarre. There are very few places in the world that you can eat around the world in most provincial towns and cities in the country.”

The Hairy Bikers will also visit Lancashire, Merseyside, North Wales, Bristol, and Dorest and Devon in the show.

The Hairy Bikers Go West starts on BBC Two at 7pm tonight (Tuesday, February 6).

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