Scooter Rally Toscano: Elba 2024 | RALLERY

Work it out. How many riding years have you got left? Have you marked off all your must-do-once rally list yet?

If Elba wasn’t ticked off on that list (and it should be, along with legendary events like IoW and Giro dei Tre Mari) then you were in trouble. For 13 long years there hadn’t been an Elba rally. 

Finally, in 2024, organisers Green Onions SC from Siena relented to constant requests to bring back the legend. It would be 20 years since I did my first one; riding from Rimini over the Apennine mountains with a gang of friends who are still, mostly, riding to rallies.

A renewed Elba scooter rally was like an opportunity for another weekend with a lover that you haven’t seen for more than a decade. Is it possible for the passion to be as good as you remember when so many winters have passed, waistlines expanded and hairlines receded like the tide?

If in doubt, peace and pout

Early Season

Elba rally in early May is pretty much pre-season for the fabulous island. Half of the tourist businesses remain in hibernation, but as soon as the date was announced accommodation around Capoliveri and Morcone Beach – where the rally is based – vanished like illicit crisps at a slimmer’s convention.

Not an auto but still plenty of plastic (including a SLUK T5 Driver Screen!)

Thundery start

The chief problem with this time of year is that winter seems to have slipped a cog and can now turn up unexpectedly at any time; much like the Spanish Inquisition. The week leading up to Elba was mostly appalling. Vast swirling thunderstorms covered much of Europe. Through the driving rain came small bunches of hardcore scooter riders from every direction. Over the weekend I met a bunch from Antwerp and Brussels who rode for four days under the rain to reach Elba. Sven and clubmates from Speed Demons SC in Hamburg rode down in similar conditions leaving Thomas too ill to talk. Peace at last.

Ridden from Belgium. Fair play guys.

Happy Eaters

While most of our gang, who remained in Italy after the RLC weekender, set off for Tuscany on Tuesday to escape the looming storm, Tracy and I were not so lucky on Thursday. We got hammered by a biblical rainstorm on the top of the Viamaggio Pass and spent two hours drying out in front of a wood burner in a restaurant. We ate splendid pasta and enjoyed a glass of wine in the company of some bloke called Noah who was taking a break from boat-building. If Little Chef roadside cafes were more like that, maybe they’d still be in business.

One consequence of the ageing scooterist population, massive distances and terrible weather is that a huge proportion of the scooters on the island arrived there by van or trailer; particularly those in the custom show. 

I’m reconciled with this now as a fact of life. As long as the van gang don’t gloat about how warm and dry they are while you are dripping wet; then we can all get along. The 21^st century is all about acceptance of diversity; so if you are happiest coming in a Trannie, then good for you. Obviously; those whose journeys are less arduous have more energy to party; but that’s always been the case.

Elba seems to have the same magical property as the Isle of Wight, in that the weather travelling there can be terrible, but for some reason, the sun always shines on the scooter rally. So it was this time. As soon as our bunch rode to the Blu Navy ferry terminal (booking discounted with your rally ticket) the sun got his hat on and any damp kit began to dry out.

Red Tape

The rally was like a time machine, with lots of the same people transported 13 years into the future in the same location as before. The daytime activities took place at the Mandel bar on Morcone Beach, while the evening dos were at Mandel 2 club a little way up the hill.

Bureaucracy

Before you could settle, there was just a little Italian bureaucracy to circumnavigate. The organisers were forced by the right-wing government’s new anti-rave legislation to record every participant’s details. You did this by filling out a confusing form on one of three laptops; each with an Italian-layout keyboard. The whole process of queueing and typing took up roughly an hour of valuable drinking time, before you could fill in the form as Santa, and detail how far you rode from Lapland behind Rudolf.

The next issue to tackle was the bonkers token system for drinks where you could buy one colour token for beer, another for Spritz and yet another for cocktails. Failing that, you could just go to the other on-site bar which accepted cash or cards for the same drinks. Bananas. Daiquiri mostly…

Fetch the rope

The visitors from Belgium commented on how few events were planned for the weekend; beyond the two all-nighters, the ride-out and custom show on Saturday. To improve daytime engagement they suggested maybe fun-games such as a tug-of-war. That’s perfect to keep up the spirits of rally troops during a wet weekend in Belgium, or even Skegness. When on Elba, with a bar full of good people overlooking a beautiful sandy bay, and having a scooter to sample the twisty roads leading to many more delights, a tug-of-war would rank pretty low on my must-see list.

Each new SIP Lambretta seat will come with a floating head

Go scoot go

While many of the owners looked more dishevelled than the last time they were at Elba; their scooters were often newly refurbished.

Elba rally formed part of the 2024 SIP Tour, so expect a full video soon from them

Popular themes included:

• Widebody Lambretta S1 and S2s – the once unloved older LI-series now seems as popular as the Slimstyles
• Old-school Metalflake: lots and lots of lovely sparkly scooters with more flakes than Kelloggs
• Extended forked Vespas: another welcome blast from a misspent past
• Parkas and patches: many of the Italian scooterists sport slimmer-fitting parka-style coats cataloguing a lifetime of friends and rally attendances
• A lack of automatics: the flyer is very clear that the event is ‘solo per scooters a marce’ (only for geared scooters)

All-nighter

The evening began in our particular holiday camp with a massive impromptu aperitivo. It was hosted outside the Lambretta Club of Ireland apartments; including a healthy supply of craic (rather than crack), beer and ‘walking wine’. We then began a precarious yomp down a dodgy cliff path to the do. Meanwhile, it seemed like everyone else rode their scooters to the do; which is something you rarely see outside of southern Europe; where gravity and gravel rash do not exist.

To make up for the lack of rope-based pulling contests, the Green Onions at least put on parties with respectable finishing times. Anyone who is still suffering post-lockdown agoraphobia will have struggled with how busy it was in Mandel 2, but the atmosphere more than made up for it.

DJing was very much Blues Brothers saloon-style (“We’ve got both types of music: Ska and Soul…”) but all the hits kept the dancefloor busy. At the beginning, the formula was punctuated by enthusiastic all-girl beat band The Cleopatras; covering things like “my pussy can do the dog”. I bailed out a 3:30 am but by all accounts, the rave kept going until at least 5:30, with the stragglers not rolling in until daylight.

Schedule 

Being Latin of temperament, you should expect things on Italian rallies to happen at a leisurely pace and for any timetable to have the flexibility of bamboo. The custom show was merely the upper level of Mandel 1 where the snobbier scooters seemed to hang about. Nobody knew when the judging would take place, so the longer you left your scooter there, the more likely you were to win something.

Masochists

Other on-site entertainment came in the form of a few stalls including SIP’s new product display, a tattooist/torturer for all the masochists and a repair stall with few tools and even fewer spare parts. If you needed a serious repair – like getting an exhaust welded – then you had to find someone off-site to do it. Ricky from our club – who rode together with Sarah from the UK – had more splits than Fleetwood Mac in his Chiselspeed RB exhaust, so we had to find a welder before lunchtime. Gegio from Scooterismo pointed us in the direction of a fabrication workshop on the far side of Capoliveri. 

We were not the first to track down the elusive metal-basher in his proper old-school workshop. My friend Maicol was already there with his dad, also tackling a broken exhaust issue. The welder quickly zapped Ricky’s pipe and after an even older-school pressure test, we returned to our digs for a spot of traditional scooter rebuilding. Presumably, others would have been busy scouring the island for new windscreen wiper blades. Or maybe not.

You can’t park that there mate!

Rideout

The French scooterists in our digs said that the rideout was at 1 pm, so I felt quite rushed. Once back at Mandel I needn’t have bothered. Gegio explained that the schedule stated 3 pm but was more likely to depart nearer to 4 pm. This leisurely pace is perfect for those who’ve only just got up after a nighter, or are still on the end of a long lunch. Scooter Rally Toscano is a truly Mediterranean affair.

Aperitivo

The traditional ride destination of Cavo in the north of the island was rejected by the Onions because the owners wanted too much money to provide an aperitivo of snacks and alcohol. Instead, we wound our way around the slippery and bumpy island roads in a majestic blue cloud to the nearby beautiful bay of Porto Azzuro. There, we were directed to a nearby car park for 30 minutes. Apparently, the glorious seafront was being used as a film set and several hundred spewing two-strokes did not feature in the script. Oh and one 4-stroke, as Tino Sacchi was there riding his 200cc OHV-converted Lambretta engine. That was busy leaking oil after a previous test rider clouted the sump on a kerb. 

Tino is also looking at other options to continue using Lambrettas in the future if emissions regulations continue to tighten. His next development is a true fuel injection system; first for the Targa twin. He then plans to offer pre-mapped systems to suit the other engines in his cylinder kit range. It’s great that he is still enthusiastic to try new solutions, to solve a problem that many people are still burying their heads about.

Thankfully this was not the end of the ride-out. Together, we wound our way back up to another car park in Capoliveri where the community were busy there to welcome us all with free wine, nibbles and a booming sound system. 

This is one brilliant thing about Italy. So many people take a pride in their home town that they are prepared to take some time to hand out free food and drinks to thirsty travellers. In England, they’d either see it as a way to make a quick buck or write angry letters to the local newspaper. Thanks very much Pro Loco Capoliveri!

Comparison

Elba rally is similar to the Isle of Wight in many ways. It carries a legendary status that causes scooterists to flock to it from all over the continent. On the island you are pretty much free to do your own thing: explore, wine, dine or party. There’s a holiday vibe that wind-lashed inland campsites can never match. It’s also big enough, and accommodation spread out so much, that it’s possible to completely miss friends who are doing different things, so communication is key if you want to spend time together and chill.

We made the fortuitous decision to stay an extra day after a relatively mellow Saturday night dining with mates from Romania, Belgium, Germany and Ireland. Sunday dawned warm enough for a snorkel in the crystal blue sea and a final farewell meal with our multinational gang before we headed our separate ways.

Green Onions and their sponsors must be congratulated for the effort that they put into the event. They offered good value at €30 entry for what was a very authentic old-school Italian scooter rally.

Relight my fire

So, after almost a decade and a half, how does it feel to revisit that old flame? Obviously, the stamina we all had in our youth has subsided a little, but there is still enough magic and mystery to reignite the passion that I felt on the very first time. The excited butterflies in my stomach as we approached the island by ferry were still there. I remembered why I once loved Elba, and even though she’s picked up some annoying new habits in our years apart, I still love her dearly.

Homeward bound

All that remained was to say goodbye once again and ride home over the mountains in the sun on a 333cc Lambretta with old friends and new. 

Well, if I must…

Sticky

Additional photos by Tracy