Hi, my name is Dave Oldland and I am a tragic scooterist.  The initial reason I wanted to start a blog was to have one place to store and archive personal photos and experiences of the scootering scene in the ‘60s and ‘70s.  While collating this information, I thought this passion might be of interest to some of you in the wider community.

In my formative years I had the good fortune to grow up in Bristol, UK (home to the first Vespa rally in 1952).  At fourteen years of age, I bought my first Vespa scooter, an old rod model.  As I was too young for a license, I could only ride it up and down the back lane.  In 1966, at sixteen and licensed to drive, I bought a new Vespa 90ss and joined the Avon Valley Vespa Club.  I met a fantastic group of local people which expanded to a network of national groups through the Vespa and Lambretta clubs of Britain, many of them friends to this day.  I passed my driving test and started enjoying riding my scooter for fun as a ‘mod’.

This soon escalated to travelling the country to enter national club gymkhanas, navigation trials, hill climbs, off-road sporting trials and the annual pilgrimage to the Isle of Man for Scooter Week.  I started acquiring skills with the ability to handle the scooter in rough conditions such as club rally rough rides, sporting trials and grass track racing.

Emigrating to Perth, Western Australia after eight memorable years of scootering in 1974 was a tough decision made slightly more palatable by the fact of a four-week cruise for ten pounds where my honorary title is now a ‘ten-pound Pom’.  I didn’t know that the 1976 IOM Scooter Week in its current form would be its last.  My partner and I travel back to the UK every year for two or three months and have a bolthole in Sand Bay near Weston-Super-Mare.

From 1957 to 1976 following the famous Isle of Man TT motorcycle week thousands of scooter riders have descended on the Island for Scooter week most often in June.

I have recently taken ownership of a fully restored 1966 Vespa 90ss in the UK and along with a couple of mates intended to revisit the Isle of Man in May  with our scooters to once again have some fun on the TT course.  Flights and the Manx ferry were booked but COVID-19 is now responsible for restricting travel from Australia to anywhere in the world so the trip is on hold.  Hopefully, the trip will be back on in 2021 2022 when I hope to recreate some before and now pics and provide accounts of the various events which occurred on the scootering calendar of those years and elicit other material from like-minded enthusiasts.  I also hope to catch up with some of the legendary doyens of that era to bring you their recollections and insights of those halcyon years.

I hope this and the memorabilia in future posts will connect with you, trigger memories and cause some smiles in those of you that were part of that era and be of interest to those who were not.

If you would like to contribute, correct or contact me about future posts I would love to hear from you.  Take care, Dave.

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