Of course, the lad I’d seen waggling his legs on my way home from work became a lifelong friend, Gordon Roper; we’re still great chums. We often talk about our days with the club. We’ve both got fond memories of those great times. Bob Young and Gordon were stalwarts, and highly competitive. On one trip, years later, they headed off to the 1000 Kilometre event in Italy. It was written up in Scootering and Lightweights magazine when they returned home, which was a fantastic thing. Of course, we were all in awe of Bob & Gordon on their exploits. Bob and Gordon had ridden to and entered in a wonderful event, and they had so much to tell us about it. It opened a door to a whole world of other scooter activities which was going on around the world.

By the late 60’s I was well into local scooter sport. Challenging, contesting, and eventually winning the Scottish Grass Championship, and the Scooter Scot trophy. My attention turned to the wider UK scooter sports scene. In 1971, we ventured south to England with scooters on trailers to compete on the major road trials. Bob Young and I rode down on the bikes to the Northern 200, which started near Rochdale. We did the Starlight trial, which was run by the Birmingham Cherubs at the time, and the Western 250 from just outside Birmingham. Bob was a true master of his art. He could take on the event, and ride with his cunning and guile to success. He was a superb road trialist. After the Glasgow Vespa Club folded in 1978, Bob became chairman of the Scottish Auto Cycle Union. He’s sadly passed away, and he is missed by all his old pals. He’s had trials bikes and enduro bikes and taken part in those events on big wheels. His scooter experiences had led him to other interests, but first and foremost, he enjoyed riding his scooter.

I suppose it would be fair to say that the events in Scotland had been around for some time, so travelling to England created a wee bit of excitement. However, you knew if you went to Aberdeen you would always get a cracking event. If you went to Perth, this was where the Scottish National rally event was held, which was always fairly similar. A “for instance”, a gymkhana consisted of a skill ride over see-saws, under canes and round bollards, along planks, keeping your feet up. Then, there would be a slow ride where you’d try to keep your feet up as long as you could, whilst riding within a lane against other riders in their lanes. There would also be a slalom speed event, where you’d go around cones. You could put a foot down but weren’t allowed to knock the bollards over. Then we’d have the Maltese cross, where you’d have to ride from one point of the cross, then to all the other three points and come back to the start. If you worked it out, you’d cover the same distance, no matter which way you went. Then we’d move on to the fun games, or pillion games as we called them. We’d do things like throw the ball in a bucket, or your pillion would kick a wee see-saw thing on the floor, and a ball would come shooting out of a cup and you had to catch it in a net, whilst riding the scooter. That one was called ‘Balls to you’ which was rather apt!! There were a few clubs up in Aberdeen; they had the Aberdeen Vespa Club and The Aberdeen Scooter Club. Their teams would go over to the Isle of Man; the Aberdonians sent Team Furneaux over. Furneaux was a scooter dealer in Aberdeen, and he sponsored them. The riders put his stickers on the side panels in return. We had great fun with the Aberdonians, they were a great bunch and still get Christmas cards from some of them. It’s nice to still have communication with people from so long ago.