Episode 2 The Hairy Bikers' Restoration Road Trip

'Us two Hairy Bikers might be known for our cooking.

'But our family roots lie in Britain's proud industrial past.'

My father was a print worker.

My grandfather was a winder in the mines.

And his grandfather also worked in the pits.

Just do as you're told and be careful.

My dad started work in the local steelworks when he was 12,

the same steelworks that gave me my first wage packet.

'All across the country,

'teams of passionate, skilled volunteers...'

Come on, next one! Get the bolt out.

'..are rebuilding the great icons of Britain's industrial past.'

-Can you go any faster, lad?

-Yes.

'And we're going to lend a helping hand,

'tinkering with some unbelievable machines.'

-Yes!

-I'm a train driver!

'From steam trains to coal mines

'and traction engines to cotton mills...'

What an achievement! Yes!

'Every week, we'll be travelling across the nation,

'seeking out the most exciting restoration projects.

'Swapping our chefs' hats for hard hats, our spatulas for spanners,

'and getting our hands well and truly dirty!'

Covered in muck and oil instead of pastry! Heaven!

For we're in danger of forgetting what made this country

the workshop of the world.

And we're absolutely determined that's not going to happen.

And now is the time to rebuild industrial Britain,

before it's too late.

HORN TOOTS

'This week, I try farming like my great-great-great granddad...'

-Now turn it the other way, quickly. Not yet, back a bit.

-Not yet!

-Not yet! What are you doing?!

-This is what our ancestors did.

It brings you close to your roots.

'..And fix the engine that changed the face of the British countryside.'

Cor, look at this! It's traction engine Utopia!

Oh, wow! Look, there's loads of them!

'And we get all tied up in knots with cotton...'

He's better with spaghetti!

'..and get mucky restoring Britain's first HGV...'

-I think that's all right, that, yeah.

-He didn't sound too surprised!

'..With some heritage heroes who'll help see us right...'

You find yourself working as part of a team, which is a lovely feeling.

Brilliant! Next!

Well, we start our journey in Swindon, in the leafy south,

in search of our own farming roots.

You see, my great-great-great-great-great grandparents were Yeomen farmers

who owned a few acres of their own.

Landed gentry, eh, Myers?! Aye!

Well, my lot were all labourers, doing all the blooming work!

Yeah, well, hard work doesn't seem to run in your blood, though, Kingy!

You can shut your face, you, you toff!

Before the Industrial Revolution,

farmers worked the land with horses, the way they always had.

But then, from the 1840s, steam power arrived

and changed everything.

The most revolutionary of engines on the farm was the traction engine.

We're all used to seeing tractors and combine harvesters.

Well, the traction engine is their daddy.

The traction engine's job was to power farming machinery.

They could power anything from ploughs to threshers to dredgers.

Now, instead of a team of labourers and horses,

just a couple of farmers and a traction engine would do the job.

It was a massive change and our great-great-great grandparents,

along with their horses, were no longer much needed.

They were out of a job.

But, like horses,

chugging traction engines soon became part of our landscape.

Until the 1950s, when they were finally overtaken by tractors

and sent for scrap.

Today, we're going to meet two passionate restorers,

who have made it their life's work

to save as many traction engines as they can.

And we're going to help restore a prized example.

Cor, look at this! It's traction engine Utopia!

-Oh, wow! Look, there's loads of them!

-Isn't there?

-This is my brother, Ian.

-How do, Ian?

'Brothers Colin and Ian Hatch have steam running through their veins.'

'Their father and grandfather both worked on the railways

'in the golden age of steam

'and they're carrying on the family tradition with traction engines.'

Oh, look at this!

This is traction engine Keeling, which was built in 1909.

It's fantastic! And this was an agricultural engine?

That's right, yeah. So it was used for general farm work.

This is it, the Burrell traction engine.

Travelling at an astonishing six miles an hour,

it was the Ferrari of its time.

But she needs a lot of work

if she's going to hit those dizzy speeds again.

'And it's not like booking your car in for a service.

'She's already been in restoration for two years.'

'You know, I feel a bit sorry for her.

'At the moment, she's looking a bit bare.'

You see the skeleton of it now.

I mean, the boiler there is the main frame of the engine.

And everything is bolted on and around it.

So it's quite a lovely looking thing when it's all together.

-It's a beautiful thing.

-Yeah.

-It's a beautiful thing.

-Right. Well, shall we get cracked on?

-Well, we ought to, yeah.

Brilliant. Let's go. Lead the way.

'Colin and Ian have reached an important stage in the restoration,

'work on Keeling's enormous drag gears.

'The gears are what let the steam engine power the wheels,

'so it's a critical job. '

'And you know what? we're here to provide some muscle.'

'The gears consist of a huge set of interlocking cog wheels.

'Before we can put them back on the engine,

'two of them have to be riveted together.'

'Now, you'd think that was a simple job, wouldn't you?

'If you weren't 100 years old and entirely made by hand.'

OK, guys, what we're going to do now,

we're going to move on to the differential gear.

-We're going to rivet that onto the brand-new gears.

-Right.

Before we do that, we've actually got to make the rivets.

Because we can't just go down the DIY and get some.

-So what we're going to do, we're going to take the rivet bar...

-Right.

..and then we're going to make them in the press.

-We're going to form the heads first.

-So that's done by hand?

That's done in a big press.

-Let the meat feel the heat!

-Let's go and make some rivets!

'The two gears need to turn together and for a permanent join

'for two bits of metal in the Industrial Revolution,

'they used rivets.

'And we're going to have to make them ourselves.'

'I tell you what, it's not easy, this restoration lark, is it?

'I mean, making your own rivets from scratch? Crumbs!'

'Aye, it's no wonder it's taken them two years so far!'

-OK, guys, are you happy with that?

-Yeah.

Well, that's the professional way of doing it!

'There's only a couple of other places in Britain

'that still make rivets this way.

'The brothers are keeping a heritage skill alive.'

'First, heat the steel bar until it's red hot.

'And that's an 800 degree hot steel sausage. I tell you!'

'That's 70 tonnes of pressure.

'That's like dropping a truck on your sausage!'

-How's that? First one. Nice!

-Nice!

-OK, let's go for another.

'I'm not just tapping them for luck!

'It's to get rid of stray bits that don't belong.'

Let's have a look, Si. Yeah, that's a good shape. Ideal, ideal.

There's something kind of primeval, a man at the forge!

-Oh, it's brilliant!

-It is brilliant.

-Good job.

-Thank you.

Do you know, that's the first time I've ever done kind of tool-making.

-Yeah.

-You know, actually making the tools with which to do the job.

-Yeah. Just amazing.

-And you find yourself working as part of a team.

-Yeah.

-Which is a lovely feeling.

-Brilliant! Next!

'Well, next, Colin asks us to get this massive gear into position,

'so that we can take out the bolts and replace them

'with the rivets we've just made.'

-Oh, I get it.

-So we're going to put this tube through the hole.

-A bit higher?

-Yes. Give it a bit of brute force and ignorance!

-Right, we're down, Dave.

-That's lovely.

'And the reason we replace the bolts

'is because after years of vibration, bolts can rattle loose.

'But rivets can't, and we want this gear to last another 100 years.'

OK, guys. Right.

This is the serious stuff now, we're going to talk about riveting.

We'll talk you through the gun. What we've got...

Just take hold of that one and feel the weight of that.

-Get a feel for the job.

-Oh, it's heavy.

-It is heavy, yeah. Yeah.

It's a pneumatic riveting gun.

And inside the barrel there's this item, which is called the piston.

And this reverberates when we throttle on the lever,

inside the chamber. And that strikes on the end of this snap. Rivet snap.

And this is what gives us our nice formed head when we close the rivet.

OK.

-Most importantly, this is quite a dangerous piece of equipment.

-Yes.

OK. If you don't hold the gun up against the work,

rigidly hold it there,

it will try and throw the snap out the end of the gun.

And of course, you're opposing your mate the other side.

-So you could shoot your friend!

-You could, yeah.

'So, if you slip or lose control, you could shoot your mate!'

'Ah, brilliant(!) Don't shoot us, mate, will you?'

'Oh, I'll do me best!'

You need to be aware that you must get your body weight

behind the thing and be in control of it. Don't let it control you.

-Sounds easy!

-OK.

-Yeah.

-Do you want to give it a go? BOTH:

-Yeah!

Mike reheats the rivets until they are red-hot

and there's no going back.

Take that bolt out, and then we're ready for Mike.

Ready?

OK, mate! Hammer's on.

'It's a tough job, and we have to use the force of our entire

'body weight to push against the rivets.'

Stop!

How's that?

Brilliant! Fabulous!

-Nice one, mucker.

-Well done.

-It's mint as well!

-Next one, get the bolt out.

-It's more manly than making scones.

Isn't it? Covered in muck and oil instead of pastry. Heaven!

I tell you what, there's no rest for the wicked.

We have to strike while the rivet's hot.

Hammer's on!

Stop!

-Lovely! That's a good rivet.

-Good rivet.

-This is so satisfying!

It's proper heavy engineering, isn't it?

It's where we're from, mate.

It is, it's in our genes. This is what our ancestors did.

-It brings you closer to your roots.

-It does.

You'll be able to stand back and look at the rivets you've put in,

there for everybody to see.

Another hundred years.

-Yeah, why not?

-That's heritage.

-We've got to keep it going.

-Dead right.

'The gears will soon be ready to fit onto the engine,

'and that will be a proper heavy lifting job.

'Colin will need us to come back for that to lend some muscle power.

-'Spinach for breakfast, spinach for lunch and spinach for tea.

-Oh, no!

'But before Colin lets us go,

'there's one last thing he wants to show us.

'Colin spent years restoring

'another Burrell traction engine of his very own,

'just like the one we're restoring.

'And he wants us to see what the finished engine looks like.'

-Look at this!

-She's beautiful.

-A rather nice Burrell traction engine.

-Thumping away like a beating heart.

-It's lovely, isn't it?

Listen to it. Fabulous.

ENGINE CLICKS REGULARLY

It's therapeutic, that, isn't it?

The motion of that engine, in my head,

is in direct proportion to the pace of time in those days.

It's just everything is just so, nothing too fast, nothing too slow.

It's funny, it's so relaxing, and yet the presence of these machines

heralded a more hectic age in a way.

People lost their jobs because of mechanisation on the farms, so this

was regarded as a modern contrivance that put people out of work.

That's our lot he's talking about, that is, there.

It's keeping people in work now,

because things like this are part of our historical importance.

Traction engines replaced our ancestors down on the farm.

You know what? I'd like to see how they actually did change things.

So we're heading down the road to see a pair of traction engines

at work, ploughing a field.

Let the traction see the action!

Once upon a time, ploughing meant one man and his horse

going up and down at field at a leisurely pace all day.

-That's what my great-great-great- grandad did.

-And my family too.

It sounds like a nice old life if you ask me.

And then along came traction engines, just like Keeling.

Traction engines could pull a plough much faster than a horse could,

with up to six times the number of blades.

There was no competition.

For the most efficient ploughing system,

you would use two traction engines.

You'd put one traction engine at one end of the field and the other

at the other end, and you'd connect the two by a long table.

Then you'd simply attach the plough to the cable

and pull it up and down. It's like a push-me, pull-you

and it's about 20 times faster than the horse.

-Goodbye, ancestors.

-Goodbye, horse!

Right, mate, let's have a go.

Robert here has a fully restored pair of traction engines

and he's all ready to show us the pluses of ploughing by steam.

How are you doing? Are you well? Here's the man himself!

-Hello, Robert.

-Hi, Robert, how are you? This is an amazing sight!

So, Robert, how much faster was it to plough like this

than coming from horse-drawn ploughing?

Horse-drawn, you'd be lucky if you did an acre in a day,

and these, you could do a good 20 acres of ploughing,

-if you're cultivating, probably twice that.

-Wow.

'Dave, just think, you lot were landowners before all this happened.

'Aye, but I guess they were the ones that got left behind.

'They were still sticking with the horse.'

They were wealthy before the Industrial Revolution,

but it went the other way.

They went in as labourers and never came out!

And my lot, we were just thrown off the land

because we were itinerant workers. Started out in the south,

moved to Cumbria for work, and then everybody went,

-"Right, forget that," so we went down the pit.

-Displaced.

We were displaced and thinking, "Right..."

-Can we have a go?

-Certainly.

Robert's plough has six curved blades at each end

so it can be pulled up and down the field

without having to turn it around.

-Come on, then. Who's going to steer?

-Me.

Dave's going to pull the plough down. Are you short? He's disgruntled.

You can have a go!

That'll be me being the stability management executive.

In other words, human ballast!

You're going to tell Jason when you're ready to go.

We might not be ready for a while.

-Go on, Dave, you'll be all right! Go on, Dave!

-We'll do it when he moves.

Are you ready, then?

WHISTLE TOOTS LOUDLY

Jason toots twice so the engine at the other end of the field

knows we're ready and he can start to pull the plough.

Except we're not ready at all, and it's raining.

We're fighting against the weather.

Ordinarily, in the olden days, they wouldn't have done this,

they would have given it up as a bad job and gone to the pub.

-I like the term "we"!

-I'm explaining to the viewers

why it's difficult for you, because it's pouring with rain

and they wouldn't have been doing it, would they?!

But because we're professionals,

we want to make a good television show for you lovely people

sitting with a cup of tea in your front rooms,

we're out here getting soaking wet with a very large piece of machinery

we've never driven before, in the rain.

-Si, are you going to get on here too?

-What do you mean?

-Just pull that down.

-Put some beef into it, Kingy!

-That's it.

-Mind the wire!

-Down. That's it.

-How do I get on here?

-You're the passenger.

-Look at that.

Look at this.

-You want a leg up?

-No, he's athletic.

-Where do I put me feet?

-Just hold on to that, you'll be fine.

Hopefully with a bit of luck, my weight will push

the blades into the ground as the plough is pulled along.

With a bit of luck?!

With a bit of luck, they won't get stuck, you mean!

All right, you're driving.

So you've just got to keep that wheel just inside the furrow wall.

-I'll stand next to you.

-It can't be that hard.

-I'll tell you what. I don't think this is going to fly.

-It might.

Keep your chest away. It might knock your teeth out.

-It's not his chest, it's his belly!

-That's not my belly!

Give Jason a wave, then.

-WHISTLE TOOTS TWICE

-I wish he wouldn't do that.

You wouldn't get Jeremy Clarkson doing this.

-Put the right hand down. Bit more!

-It's easier said than done!

-Get it over!

-I am getting it over! It's over.

-Not bad, Kingy.

-It's not easy, I'll tell you!

It's not, but you can suddenly see how a pair of engines,

one at each end of the field, could do the work of tens of labourers,

like my great-great-great-great- great-grandparents.

Now a bit of left hand down, just before he stops, hard left.

That's it!

-How did it go, then? Did you enjoy it?

-Aye.

It was quicker than I anticipated.

Power steering could be a useful thing on this thing.

It's not too bad, Kingy, you have carved a course.

With blades on both ends of the plough, there's no need to stop.

All you do is pull the other end down and off you go.

This time, it's not so easy.

You've got to steer left to go right and steer right to go left!

You need to go at the front, then. There we go.

And we've got to put the rope in there.

That's it.

-My feet don't reach.

-So when he starts off...

I can't really see.

Tally ho!

Right hand down.

Don't fall off! Get your feet up on them things!

-Oh, you've only got little legs!

-I've got very long legs.

-Is that right?

-Now turn it the other way, quickly.

-Not yet! Back a bit.

-Not yet!

-What are you doing?!

-It's all right. I'm getting the hang now.

That's it, mate, that's it. Go on, Dave!

Look what we've done to this field. We can't gloss over that, can we?

-Shut up.

-It's like an S-bend.

It's all gone a bit wonky donkey.

-That was an experience.

-I'm frightened to look back.

Go on, have a look.

THEY LAUGH

-Not bad. What do you think?

-Well, you couldn't see, could you, mate?

No, but I didn't feel it go out of the furrow.

No, you can't see, which is probably part of the reason why...

-Bit more practice, eh?

-How do you put a field back into rightful order?

It might take me a while. Anyway, we're not worried about that.

-Just as well, really.

-Come on, then.

Robert has what's called a living van.

At last we can get out of the flaming rain.

After you, boss.

Yes, but for a whole team of ploughmen,

this would have been home.

And for months on end,

they would have travelled round with their own traction engines.

-Well, this is cosy, isn't it?

-There's such a lot of work in this.

-Why do you do it, Robert?

-For fun. I just enjoy it.

It's taken me years. The first engine took 13 years to restore.

I get a great sense of achievement in getting a rusty hulk

and bringing it back to life.

That motivation and passion to keep the heritage and fundamentally

the culture of our country is quite a remarkable thing.

It's just amazing.

It's important to keep them working and not just as static exhibits.

Steam engines are very special things.

They move, they're warm, they have their own characteristic smell

and characteristics in themselves,

and they're quite unique in that respect.

As they say, once bitten, forever smitten.

It's strange to think

we've just worked the machine that ruined my family.

Steam engines changed people's lives and even changed the countryside.

And yet you can't help but love them.

But what about all the people who left the land? Where did they go?

-My family went to the steelworks.

-Aye, and mine went down the pit.

But by far and away the biggest employer

of the Industrial Revolution was the textile industry.

We Brits clothed the world.

And it was in the picturesque Derbyshire valley of Derwent

where it all started.

At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution,

it was here at Masson Mills that the great inventor

Richard Arkwright used waterpower to spin cotton and change the world.

You see, mate, this is more like it! Look, a dark Satanic mill.

You might call it Satanic, but before the Industrial Revolution,

cotton was spun by hand, using just one spindle.

A really skilled spinster could make about nine feet of thread a minute.

With the Industrial Revolution came the spinning mule,

a revolutionary machine that could spin 600 times more cotton -

three miles a minute.

With the help of the spinning mule,

Britain soon became the world leader in cotton production,

producing 98% of the world's cotton.

Aye, and at its peak,

the British cotton industry employed 750,000 people.

Sadly, there's been no spinning at Masson Mills since 1991.

Until now.

In the Mill's basement, mechanical engineer Howard

has been tinkering with this 1906 spinning mule for ten years.

It's got several hundred thousand parts, and with 748 spindles,

it's the longest-surviving machine of its type in the world.

And Howard is the only man alive

who could put this industrial jigsaw puzzle back together.

Howard, hello, I'm Si, very nice to meet you.

-Hello, I'm Dave, pleased to meet you.

-Good to meet you.

'Howard's mum worked down t'mill,

'so he's been picking up these skills ever since he was a nipper.'

I first went in mills as a small boy

when I was about nine or ten years old.

I went in mills and I saw machinery very much like this running,

and that was how I got interested in it, and still do it as a hobby today.

And you're one of the few people still left who know how

-to rebuild this machine.

-Yes.

'This is the big day.

'If all goes well, Howard is planning to start her up.'

'We could be helping Howard to spin cotton on this machine

'for the first time in 25 years.'

'But my guess is, he'll have some tricky jobs for us to do first.'

You've got some work on.

Yeah, we've a fair bit to do, as you can see.

I'm glad to see you've got your overalls on.

-We're ready for work!

-Excellent.

-Give you a hand, mate, we thought.

There's no shortage of that, no shortage of that.

Howard, what is a spinning mule?

Well, spinning mule -

spinning is the process of turning raw cotton into yarn.

-So, this is a bit of cotton yarn here.

-Yeah.

As you can see, it's quite fine, and reasonably strong.

Cotton itself, as a raw material, is just very short fibres,

-so if I untwist this, it comes to pieces.

-Yes!

-Mm-hm.

You see, the fibres themselves are maybe only an inch long.

And the process of spinning is about putting twist in the yarn.

Twist is the thing that gives it its strength.

-Yeah?

-Wow.

-So, that twist is the secret of virtually all textiles.

-Right.

-And a spinning machine is a machine that puts the twist in.

Right.

Well, I think we'd better get cracking,

-I think we've got our hands full.

-I think we have.

-Plenty to do.

-Right.

-Let's go.

Time to get this hundred-year-old mule spinning again. If we can.

-What you don't want is dirty yarn coming off the machine.

-Right.

So, first thing to do is to take these bolsters out the top, here.

'Right, we're going to take the spindle mechanisms apart,

'bit by bit, and clean it.

'Aye. It's fiddly.'

Not a job for the clumsy folk, is it, this one?

Well, there's lots and lots of delicate little things.

'This mule had more than 700 spindles.

'In its glory, it was 120 feet long.'

-It's got the smell of Meccano.

-Er - yeah. Yeah.

'Decades of accumulated filth on hundreds of moving parts -

'oh, this is going to take a while.'

The thing is, it is an antique.

And I'm very conscious of the fact I don't want to break anything

-or split anything.

-Yeah.

They're all going to be cleaned.

Right, so there we go.

'Giving us a hand with the cleaning is mill manager Andy.'

What's your connection with the mill?

I used to work here when it was a mill. I started here from school.

-I was the last apprentice in the mill.

-Really?

-Yes.

What was it like working here, in the day?

Oh, it was good fun.

Yeah. The mill girls, they were...

rum 'uns, but it was all harmless fun.

THEY LAUGH

-"They was rum 'uns"!

-"There's trouble at t'mill."

-There were definitely trouble at t'mill, yeah.

-Hee hee.

So, how many generations of the family was here, then?

I can take mine back to about 1900, something like that.

-Really?

-Aye.

'With the spindles cleaned and back in place,

'I'm hoping it's time for a spinning class.'

'But Howard's got a couple more jobs for us to do

'before we get 'er fired up.'

'Spinning machines were driven by what's called a line shaft,

'that ran the entire length of the mill.

'You just hooked your mule up, and away you went.'

'But our mule's leather connector belt is slack,

'and needs to be taken off and tightened.'

'Si's just the man for the job.'

'That's easy for you to say, mate.'

It's coming.

Hee hee, it's like watching me mother taking her corsets off.

Lots of straining, then a gasp of relief.

Pshaw.

Right...

Well, the good news is, of course, getting it back is even harder.

'Si's managed to pull the belt off - Howard will tighten it up,

'and then we're off.

'But right now, it's my turn to have a go at some work.'

'About time too, mate, as well.

'The mule's rope drive is stretched, so it needs repair.'

'Well, you'd be stretched after spinning for 80 years.

'Oh, the poor old girl.'

Could we not just have had chain?

You wouldn't believe how fast this rope goes round.

-Right.

-And how quiet it is when it's driving.

-Right.

So, ropes are actually a very efficient drive.

This is it, this is what made Britain great.

-Two blokes talking about rope.

-Aye.

It's true, though!

-You know? Cos it's not just any old rope.

-No.

-It's well-oiled, that rope.

-It's a bit like you, last night.

Aye, pot and kettle black.

'I thought it would all be about steam and welding and widgets.

'I never imagined for a moment that the key to restoring this machine

'was to learn an obscure form of knot.'

All you have to do is take a strand from that

and a strand from that and wrap them round each other.

Yeah?

It's not easy, is it?

He's better with spaghetti.

'Whilst I try and perfect my splicing,

'Howard carries out some final checks on the mule's gears

'before we fire her up. But there's a problem.'

What's up?

What's going on?

'One of the gears is too warm to operate.'

-Howard's looking very, very intense.

-Isn't he?

You all right there, Howard?

Um, perhaps taking a little bit longer than we expected.

Do you think we'll spin cotton again?

Let's keep our fingers crossed, shall we?

I'm...very hopeful.

'While Howard works at fixing the gear,

'we meet modern-day mill owner Robert.'

'Robert used to be a history teacher,

'but left school when he fell in love with steam.

'He's been collecting and restoring unwanted mills for over 30 years,

'and he has an industrial revolution treasure trove

'he wants to share with us.'

Come on in the bobbin room.

Good grief!

This is the largest collection of different bobbins in the world.

Is every one different?

There's over 660,000 bobbins, and every one is different.

'When they were spinning cotton here to sell to other mills,

'they'd wind the thread onto bobbins,

'which had to match the machine

'they'd be put onto at the other end.'

'So every single mill that bought yarn from Masson

'had its own design of bobbin.'

You know, it's interesting. I think this place,

more than any other, symbolises the human nature of the mill.

I mean, the labels with names long gone.

Geo Mallinson & Sons Ltd, Spring Grove Mills,

Linthwaite, Huddersfield.

Quote for a thousand lots, that bobbin.

-But there's such a lot of people's lives in this room.

-Yeah.

What would life have been like

-for the workers in the 19th century, here?

-It was a mixed picture,

but, I think, let this room talk to you, really.

This, here, is the result of generations of families

working in a mill.

'It looks like Howard is ready for the big moment,

'to see if we can actually spin cotton here for the first time

'in a quarter of a century.'

'This is pretty exciting.

'It's taken him ten years to get to this point.'

So, the first thing to do is to push that handle down.

And hold it down.

SPINNING MULE WHIRRS

Oh, listen to the sound of it!

Oh, brilliant!

WHIRRING INTENSIFIES

She cannot take much more, skipper!

Now lift it right to the top and hold it there.

That's it. That's the motor starting.

'Look, that's me strap running!'

'Howard has set the gears so that only the spindles move,

'nothing else.

'First, we have to attach a length of starter cotton

'to every single spindle.'

MUSIC: "Hey, Let's Twist" by Joey Dee & The Starliters

# Hey, let's twist

# All you do is this... #

This is not as easy as it looks.

It's supposed to look like that...

but I'm only getting one out of ten at the minute.

'Which is better than some people round here.'

Now...all the way down that way.

No, not up... No.

It's very infuriating, because it keeps snapping.

'Back in t'day it would have taken just a few workers

'about ten minutes to do this job.'

That's what you're looking for, all the way up to the top.

I think I've got it now. Ohh... Cha! Ohh...

'Once we've loaded the spindles, we take the raw cotton

'from the back of the machine and twist it together.

'If you get it right, the mule will keep spinning yarn

'until it runs out of cotton.'

-Nothing is like this, though, is it?

-No, this isn't...

-Howard?

-Hello.

Would people...those years ago

have done exactly the same as we're doing now?

Exactly the same,

except they'd be much more skilful even than you are.

-And therefore quite a bit quicker.

-Aye?

-That's him trying to be polite, but saying get a shift on.

-Yeah.

'Getting a spinning mule set up and properly calibrated

'is a real skill.'

This one's done.

'Get it wrong, and you end up with dozens of broken threads.'

-Let's have a percentage bet.

-Well, 50% if we're lucky.

-50% of them'll break?! Nah.

-Maybe, we'll see.

'So, this is it.

'After years of lying in bits forgotten,

'this 1906 spinning mule, if we're lucky, is about to spin again.

'Howard puts her into gear.'

'Go on, girl, go on. You can do it, go on!'

'The spindle starts spinning.

'Howard guides back the carriage

'and draws from the bobbins lengths of cotton.'

Wow!

'It starts twisting into yarn.'

'Or breaking.'

-No!

-Oh!

Nuh...

Looks bad, looks bad, but it's not as bad as it looks.

Not as bad as it looks?!

Not as bad as it looks?!

Let me show you what happens now.

-It's like a pan of bloody spaghetti, Howard.

-This is a nightmare!

-Nightmare!

-Ahh, you're panicked.

Look, that one's up, that one's up, that one's up.

'We have to get the tension on the threads exactly right, Kingy,

'or they just keep breaking.

'Right, we'd better give it another go then, mate, didn't we? You know.'

Well, that's about another hundred rethreaded, Howard.

-Let's make cotton!

-Come on!

Be good to us, machine. Be good.

Oh...!

-Oh!

-Oh-oh!

No, it's not bad.

-Yes!

-Yes.

'Well, you know, it's not quite three miles a minute,

'but we've just successfully spun cotton on a 1906 spinning mule.'

'And we've got enough for a couple of Hairy Biker hankies.'

Hi, Andy!

'And you know what? Andy's going to weave our yarn into cloth.'

In a second, you will see...

..your spun cotton woven into material.

-Right!

-Oh, this is brilliant.

Come on!

-MULE CLICKS

-Look at that!

It's our material!

Yes!

'Doesn't it look grand? Our very own Hairy Bikers hanky.'

'We could do some of these for Christmas, you know.'

'Ooh, aye. And that sound - that sound is the sound of progress.

'It's the sound of Howard having got one of the last spinning mules

'of its kind working again.

-'That's what that is, dude.'

-'And that's what we came here for.'

I think Richard Arkwright - Sir Richard Arkwright -

will be looking down on us with pride, now.

-That his mill is still living on.

-Come on, Fred Astaire.

Right, lads, let's go.

Once you've spun your cotton or harvested your crops,

you need to get them where they're going.

And that didn't happen by bike.

It happened by boat.

70 miles west of Masson Mills is Ellesmere Port,

an impressive canal system typical of the Industrial Revolution.

Canals were the motorways of their day,

allowing cargo to move easily around the country.

One of the first kind of canal boats to do this was this one -

Box Boat 337.

Box Boat 337 might not look much, but her design's over 250 years old,

the only one of her kind left in the world.

Before canals, cargo was transported by horse and wagon,

which could only carry about a ton of cargo at a time.

But the same horses pulling a canal boat

could carry 30 tons of cargo, and on a trip from London to Birmingham,

they'd be three days quicker.

With the box boat, suddenly, for the first time ever,

large cargo could be moved around the country for half the price.

Box boats were like the first container ships

loaded with identical boxes that could be lifted in and out

with a crane, filled with anything you like, from coal to cotton.

Head volunteer and ex-head teacher Di Skilbeck was here

when the box boat was first saved 35 years ago.

She was one of the founding members of the Ellesmere Port

volunteer group, and she's been saving and restoring

heritage boats since the '60s.

There's all sorts of boats here, isn't there, Di?

Look at that big 'un there, Bigmere.

-Well, that one used to work for Kellogg's.

-Right.

-And carried maize.

The maize actually came into Liverpool, was transhipped here...

-Yes?

-..then taken up the ship canal by Bigmere

to the Kellogg's factory at Trafford Park.

-Ah!

-And there were your cornflakes.

-You...Really?

You don't automatically associate boats like that

with stuff that you eat. Cornflakes, and stuff.

-It's a bit of a misnomer, really.

-That's the diversity of canals,

-you've got boats that were carrying oil, coal, cornflakes.

-Yeah.

-It was the lifeblood of the country.

-Sugar, flour,

all sorts was coming in.

It was the highway of the Industrial Revolution,

it's what got it going and what kept it going.

So, Di, when did you first get involved in canal restoration?

Er, about 38 years ago.

Well, I came down here because I was keen on industrial archaeology,

and saw this place in a terrible state,

and thought, "We can't let this go!"

And so I brought girls down, a group from school, and...

-This basin end here was solid mud.

-That?

-You could have walked out on it.

-Good grief.

And there was no way you could get any boats in here at all.

-And how did you get rid of the mud?

-Dug it out.

-Hand-bashed it?

-Hand-bashed it.

Used to bring a load of - I taught at a girls' school -

a load of girls, and we all helped.

-Ee.

-With adult volunteers as well, obviously.

-Wow.

-But everywhere was derelict.

One of the boats being restored here is the box boat.

Today it's mid-restoration,

and we've come to help with a crucial part of the work -

making the boat waterproof.

'Foreman of the boatyard is John,

'and he knows all the old skills needed to restore a classic boat.'

-What it is is actually old rope, unpicked.

-Right.

I don't know if you've ever heard the saying "money for old rope"?

-Yeah, yeah.

-That's where it comes from.

What they would do, people in workhouses, prison,

that sort of thing, for their keep,

-they would sit and they would unpick rope.

-Right.

And make it into this fibrous cord

that we can actually put into the seams, yeah?

-So they'd get paid for that. Money for old rope, yeah?

-Ah!

So, John, what would you like us to do? Cos we'd love to help.

Right, we've got a couple of seams down the back end that you can do.

-Right.

-I want you to caulk it...

-Cos without the caulking,

obviously, the boat's going to leak like a sieve, in't it?

Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah.

You pick the right size iron to fit the seam,

so you pick up your oakum,

and sort of going in at, like, a 45 degree angle...

And drive it in, and you hear it go "bong-bong."

Yeah, I heard that, yeah.

And that means it's right. Pick up the next piece...

-CHISEL KNOCKS

-That's it.

What you end up with is, like, this barley-sugar twist.

-Oh, right, yeah, yeah.

-You pick each piece up and put it underneath.

All the time, we're going along continuously at this 45 degrees

and forcing it right into the back of the seam.

So, what we do is, we go for an iron, now,

-that is virtually the width...

-The same size.

-Virtually... Just a bit of slack on it.

-Yeah, obviously, yeah.

And it's got a groove in it, and that'll actually shape the oakum,

-and it'll actually firm it up.

-Mm-hm.

-Yeah?

-So that's... That's firming that.

-It's just amazing, isn't it?

And we'll just...work that in.

-Now, that looks like an immensely satisfying thing to do.

-It is.

You can do it for hours.

-So, do you want to get set up?

-Yeah!

-Yeah? OK.

-Let's do it.

Oh, brilliant.

'We'd best do a good job, Kingy.

'We don't want any leaks to be blamed on the Hairy Bikers.'

'You're not wrong there, mate, I tell you.'

-BOTH: Chisel.

-I'm off.

What's the...? Yeah, that'll do.

So, then I pick up from there...

Yeah. Little bit more of an angle on your...

Ah, I get you.

Yeah, you're starting to get the noise now, yeah?

Yeah, and then I've got the tuft for Kingy to pick up on.

-That's it, so then you can...

-Move on a bit.

-..move on a little bit.

Right, well, I'm going to leave you to it.

I've got to go and have a look at my pitch boiler, and...

-All right, mate.

-..leave you to it.

-Cheers, John. Thanks for that.

It's like decorating a cake, isn't it?

-With icing.

-No, not really.

No, you know, look, that little furl thing, you know?

-Where you go up and around, up and around.

-All right,

-the furl's important.

-Do you know what I mean?

This is man's work, caulking.

SI CHUCKLES

Come on, then! Give it a bat.

Well, I was just waiting for you to finish.

Oh, that's looking good, now, that, dude.

You're on.

John! Right, mate.

-What do you reckon, John?

-Eh-up, are you done?

-Aye.

-I think so.

-Finished the seam.

Let's have a look.

Hey, that's all right, that.

Well, you didn't sound so surprised.

JOHN LAUGHS

No, you've done a good job there. That's boss.

I tell you what, you can see you've got better as you've gone along.

Yeah, that's well tight, there.

That's absolutely superb, that. No problems with that.

-We can black that up, and...

-Brilliant.

-Yeah, absolutely no problem.

-Oh, mint. Minted.

'Blacking, or pitching, is taking this thick, disgusting tar -

'a bit like some of Kingy's leftover flat rib broth -

'and painting it all over the outside

'of our beautiful clean boat.'

'The oil in the tar repels the water,

'making the whole boat waterproof and keeping her afloat.'

-Safety glasses.

-Safety glasses on.

-Gloves.

-Gloves.

-Attractive hats.

-Hats.

-All right.

-Mine doesn't fit very well.

-Champion.

-Come on, then. Let's have a go.

-One for you. I'll get another one.

-Cheers, John.

-I've got it.

-Right.

DAVE WHISTLES

All right, Si. There you go, that's yours.

You can start at the other end, work towards him.

-Just be nice and careful with it, yeah?

-I will.

Kingy, it's great when you get a good bit in,

-and it grabs in your crack, innit?

-I'll say it is.

So, John, is there any restoration job that you get in

that you just think, "Dear me, that's never going to float again,"

or can you pretty much make anything float?

We can make anything float.

We've got the skills,

but one of the things that we are lacking is the actual labour.

-Yes.

-And this is where the volunteers come in.

They play a huge part in what goes on in the yard.

'It's a short wait for the pitch to dry

'before we're ready for the next job.'

-What we're going to do now is scrape off the excess, yeah?

-Right.

Scraper. Dead easy.

-Ooh, aye!

-Yeah.

-Oh, and it's tidy -

you're just left with the caulking strips.

Yeah, you're just left with the caulking strips.

And what we'll do, we'll do it again.

But...we'll do all of it.

-So it'll look lovely.

-It'll all look nice and...

-And we'll get another layer of pitch into the seams.

-Yeah, brilliant.

There we go.

One for you, sir.

And what we do, we keep all this, and we put it back in the pot.

-SI LAUGHS

-Mine's a bit wet.

-Ah, you need some...

-Need a bit of elbow grease, Kingy.

-You'll be fine.

-I've got elbow grease, dude, it's not happening.

'Once we've scraped off the excess, it's time for another layer.'

'And time to finish the job.'

-We'll use the big brushes.

-Yeah, just use the big brushes.

-Put that on the deck, between you.

-Yep.

-And then away you go.

-Champion.

-Right, try and avoid the writing.

-I will do. I know.

When the boat's finished,

it should be just this big black outline on the floor where it was.

-Does it come in other colours, John?

-Yeah, it comes in black,

or you can get black,

and there's, like...maybe two other shades of black that you can get.

Hey-hey!

THEY CHUCKLE

-Wow.

-I think that's about as much as we can do

without doing a bit more caulking, John.

Yep, I'd agree with you on that.

That looks absolutely fantastic, that.

That, forever, will be a corner of Hairy Bikers' English heritage.

-Where do we clean the brushes?

-I'll clean them.

You go and play with your boat.

'It'll be another three months at least before this boat is

'ready to go back on the water.

'But when it does, it will be the only one of its kind.'

'Another piece of saved heritage,

'all thanks to passionate volunteers like John and Di.'

I'm really enjoying every chance we get to get our hands dirty,

helping them out and learning some of the amazing heritage skills.

Oh, definitely, Dave.

For me, one of the highlights has to be learning how to hot-rivet

gears with the Hatch brothers.

And today they've told us

they're ready to put the gears back on the engine.

'After two years of hard work,

'getting the gears back on is a major milestone.'

'And after this job it'll only be another four months

'before the engine is rumbling down the road

'looking splendid.'

'All they're waiting for is two hairy fellas to do the grunt work.'

There we go. Right, just the job.

-OK, right, we need to get on.

-Yeah.

So, the first thing, we're going to get this lifted up with the forklift.

'It's straight to work to get all the gears onto the engine

'and turning properly.'

-It's like docking a space station, in't it?

-It is!

We need to come down!

'Step one - put the gear...

-'..riveted by Simon King and Dave Myers...'

-'..onto the engine.'

Stop! Yes.

'And get it to mesh with the smaller gear behind it.'

Take a little bit of the weight off!

-That's it.

-Yeah.

'The problem is, when the gears don't fit to each other,

'they don't mesh.'

Slacken this thing... Just turn it a bit, that's it.

-There we go.

-Yeah!

-There we go.. How's that?

-Just need to get these to mesh now.

-Yeah.

So just turn each one until it meshes in completely...

No, it'll need to go in a bit more.

I think it may be that one, then, is it?

-That's it, that's it.

-Hold on, boys. Hold on.

There we are. That's it, yes!

-That's it!

-Good job.

There.

'Step two - put a small gear on top of the differential gear.'

-I've got it.

-All right?

Up another two inches.

-Push it down a bit...

-Yeah.

Down a tiny bit! Tiny, tiny bit.

You take one side and I'll take one side, and now it's on.

And try and wiggle it on.

We're getting there!

'Except that after a lot of pushing and pulling, we're not.'

-I'll just get a mallet so we can give it a tap.

-OK.

-Yeah.

-If you just hold on a minute.

-Aye.

-I'll go and find that.

The gears are not engaging,

so we wait for the master to return to help us out,

while Dave here sings a little song.

DAVE MIMICS RHYTHMIC MACHINERY

It's quite tight, that, actually.

Right, it sounds like the teeth are starting to engage, now.

'In the end, it's a hi-tech solution that saves the day(!)'

-Now it's there.

-Right, there we are.

Now we're getting somewhere.

-Yes!

-Yes!

Right, that's it.

OK, that goes on there first.

'Step three - secure the gears with plates and bolts.'

That pin locates in that hole...

Dave, you've got the bolt that goes in the middle now.

-The big 'un.

-Yeah, put the big one in.

-Right, I've got me doo-dah.

-OK. You can do that up.

'Putting this together is SO satisfying.

'It's like when you're a kid

'and you're putting together a Meccano crane.

'Except this is like a monster Meccano crane. Huge!'

Do you need to give the threads a wipe?

-That was it there.

-That was the one.

Funny, isn't it, with the old machinery,

it's...some bits fit a certain place, don't they?

-They do.

-Because if it's all bespoke-made...

When we had the Second World War, head sizes on bolts were reduced,

-to save materials.

-Really?

If I had to take a guess, I'd say that the one with the big head

is a pre-war head, and the one with the smaller head...

Even though they're both Whitworth, the same size,

that's a bolt from after the Second World War.

-And that's where we get the confusion with spanner sizes.

-What do you know?

Ah, you know your onions.

Knows his nuts.

Pull it!

'Step four - the final gear goes on

'before we're ready for the last piece of the puzzle.

'The flywheel.'

Stop! That's it.

'The flywheel on the other side of the engine

'will ultimately connect to the crankshaft

'to get the engine moving.'

'If we can get it on.'

We've got it on the end, but we can't get it slidden down the spine.

-If you can turn the wheel the other side...

-We're kind of jammed, really.

..through the crank and the key, so they're lined up...

We'll try and stop the crankshaft rotating

so that we can...turn that, yeah.

'Si goes over to the other side of the engine to try to hold

'the gear still, and stop the crankshaft from rotating,

'while we try to fit the flywheel.'.

Now, if we can just gently rock that...

-Beautiful.

-It's going now.

You've done this before, haven't you?

Ahh...

Another inch, boys.

-How's that?

-Pretty perfect.

-That's about there, isn't it?

-Perfect.

-That's the way. OK, lovely.

Right. Here you are, then, give that a little tap. Not too much, but...

Just... It'll be quite easy. OK?

That should do us. That's lovely.

That'll be fine. Right.

-Hey-hey!

-The moment of truth.

-Get in!

'Our last job is to make sure it all turns as it should,

'and hopefully nothing breaks.'

-So, I just spin this in a clockwise direction?

-Spin it round, yeah.

-That'll be lovely.

-Right!

-Yep.

-Say when, boys.

OK.

Doo-doo-doo!

DAVE CHUFFING TRAIN ENGINE

Wonderful.

That's beautiful. What an achievement!

Yes.

'It's perfect and beautiful,

'and we're chuffed as nuts to see our hard work pay off.'

Well, that's been a grand day, hasn't it?

-It's hard work, mind.

-It was.

You know, the funny thing is,

these traction engines may have replaced horses on the farm,

but funnily enough, they have life and personality, foibles...

And I just got that hint that we're beginning to breathe life

-back into this beast.

-It's - well, it's kind of...

-I mean, I know this sounds mad, but it feels a bit human.

-It does.

Because the care and dedication and passion that Colin and Ian have,

and all the lads in the yard,

for these wonderful, wonderful pieces of heritage,

-is just...

-Yeah.

-It's great to be involved in, isn't it?

-It's wonderful.

I've got muscles in me spit.

-Oh, I love it.

-It's brilliant.

-I love it.

This is what the engine we've been working on will look like

when it's finished.

Ha!

-What a majestic sight that is.

-Yep.

Taxi for the Hairy Bikers.

'In the world of heritage restoration,

'driving the finished engine is what it's all about.

'It's what inspires people who catch the steam bug.

'For us, it's the icing on the cake.'

-Oh, Dave.

-SI CHUCKLES

I've got to say, visibility's quite good.

You know, the last time I felt this was when we were riding elephants.

You know that kind of sense of being on something

that was massive and slightly unpredictable?

Oh, that - getting the steam in your face is just brilliant!

'It's been a fantastic trip, and what a way to end it,

'Meeting Colin and Ian's steam friends

'for our own little steam celebration.'

'I wanted to find out more about our industrial past,

'and I'm glad that we did,

'but who would've thought that we'd be falling in love with steam?'

'Steam engines, volunteers, cotton, oil and grease and metal.

'It's been great.'

WHISTLE BLOWS

'And I think it's the beginning of a steamy Hairy Biker love affair.'

Wow, look at that!

That was absolute poetry!

I mean, traction engines all in unison,

it was like as if Busby Berkeley met Brunel.

I'm with you, dude, I'm with you. And you know what?

It calls for a celebration, I think.

-Oh, let's us get steaming.

-Good idea.

'Kingy MacSteamy and Myers MacFires. I think we may be on to something.'

'I think we are, you know, dude, I think we are.'

Cheers, boys, cheers. Thank you so very, very much.

What a fantastic, fantastic opportunity.

-Thank you.

-To steam!

-To steam!

-ALL: To steam!

-Cheers.

-ALL CHEER

'Next week, we forge a giant wheel

'for the fastest steam train of its day.'

Have you noticed, he's got a look in his eye that's...

Will you put your tongue away?!

'We help restore the world's first ever steam engine.'

Dave, are we going to be able to get a Hairy Biker down that hole?

-We are now we've been on that diet!

-OK!

'And we have our first fast food steam breakfast.'

Beautiful!

Who would've thought that a mixture of good breakfast products,

soot and coal could taste so good?