In 1977 we read about a scooter rally organised by the Vespa Club of Britain to take place at Havering near London, so fifteen of us duly set off on the 110mile trip, the longest we had ever undertaken on scooters. It’s hard to believe but we were so unprepared that the trip took nearly 24 hours! We only had the vaguest idea where the rally site was. When we eventually arrived, we were greeted with looks of disbelief from about 200 Vespa riders, who were mainly from the North. I should point out that no one from Dorset had ever seen a customised Vespa, or even a flipover backrest. The South Coast was 100% Lambretta at this time. Yes there was a Vespa shop in Bournemouth, Harveys. But on our occasional reccees of this shop we had concluded that these machines were for incontinent old men and people that had style lobotomies. This illusion was disappearing before our eyes. Many of the people at the rally were under the impression that no scooters, let alone Lambrettas existed south of Watford. Once these mutual myths were shattered we set about making beer flavoured friendships that were to last many years. In particular the crowd from Burnley and Pendle, Terry Burns, Terry Pratt, Earl etc. made us more than welcome by letting us share their hotel bedrooms (not in the biblical sense!). Some of the older Vespa riders (who did fit our earlier impressions) were slightly less than pleased to see us and declined to make us eligible for any of the awards at the rally owing to the fact that we rode Lambrettas. Overall though the welcome was warm and we got to hear about unofficial ‘runs’ that took place on the North West Coast, in particular Scarborough where 100s of scooters were rumoured to gather. Three of us were so hyped from the Havering experience that we set about preparing for a trip to Scarborough on the August Bank Holiday. Myself, Steve ‘Stick’ Evans and Ricky Kashir made this epic trip to the other end of the country with some trepidation, as we had nothing to go on other than a few encouraging phone calls from Burnley.
What we found at the end of a 14-hour trip was beyond our wildest dreams. We were met by clubs from all over the North of England who treated us like gods from another planet. We couldn’t believe the site of so many customised Vespas and Lambrettas. There were probably three or four hundred machines spread amongst the cranes at Scarborough fishing docks. The atmosphere was supercharged! We found to our amazement that we could leave our possessions, helmets etc on our scooters, disappear for a drinking session and when we returned everything would be intact.
On the way home from this momentous weekend, the three of us were still absorbing every thing that we had seen and we new that things had to change in order to become part of this scene. We decided to drop the ‘Lowrider’ tag, re name the club Modrapheniacs and dedicate the club to travelling the country, on scooters to meet new people who shared our vision and to spread the faith.
