France hosted the 33rd EuroLambretta rally, just as it did the very first one in Strasbourg 1989.
I attended Strasbourg on my TS1-powered Lambretta chopper from the UK en route to Athens. Back then, it was a uniting of some very different worlds:
- Italian collectors like Vittorio Tessera and Tino Sacchi; who were close to the factory in every sense
- Older French and Dutch enthusiasts, mostly with LDs and early Lis, which many had owned since before I was born
- Scooterboys, predominantly from the UK, Germany and Austria, where the scooter rally lifestyle was in full flow
Horses for courses
All these disparate groups mixed, to a point, unified by a love of Lambretta but each with very different motivations. The Scooterboys rode all the way, parked up, partied hard and rode back. The older Europeans bought scooters on trailers and expected group rides to scenic destinations.
Trust Trev – Camlam’s 80mph GT D-models are the next big thing…
Nowadays, the Lambretta world is changing. Like it or not the Scooterboy contingent are becoming the old Lambretta enthusiasts that we didn’t understand in our youth. 33 years of riding bone-shaking Lambrettas takes its toll. Not everyone can do it forever, I appreciate that. But there were still plenty from the UK willing to give it a go, and it’s always a pleasure to see fully-loaded Lambrettas rocking up to the gate, belching smoke and disgorging tired but elated riders.
Glamp Rocker
Speaking of ‘fully-loaded’ one of the best innovations on modern rallies is the glamping tent. This means you can leave all the camping kit at home and then overload your scooter with spare stators, pistons, tools and all the other stuff that Japanese motorcycle riders never think about.
For Magny-Cours, the Lambretta Club of France (LCF) had organised a couple of companies to bring out a selection of bell tents, that could be pre-booked with beds, duvets and lights as a ‘luxury pack’ that was well worth getting. Perfect for drunken night-time activities on site with only a short wobble back to your digs. This wasn’t the cheapest accommodation option, but easily the most convenient.
Look, a young person on an affordable Lambretta!
Nevers Again!
Magny-Cours – like much of rural France – seems to be some sort of lush but largely unpopulated desert. You’ll know the name from the Formula 1 circuit but there’s nothing else in the village apart from that: two bars, one restaurant (mostly shut at mealtimes), one supermarket (largely stripped of alcohol), and a petrol pump. That’s about it for the village of Magny Cours; hence so many rally visitors plotting up in hotels in the nearest town of Nevers; which is still 16km away. Inevitably, this divided the rally between the campers and the hotel crew, with only infrequent visits in either direction.
What is in the bag that’s making the ladies so happy?
VFM without VFM
Thankfully the site itself – on a dedicated venue opposite the race circuit – was perfect. Unlike Vespa World Days; where for your ticket price you got very little but a text-only T-shirt and a food voucher, the LCF leveraged extremely good value for the Lambrettisti:
- Free camping
- 3 free breakfasts
- A free silver-service gala meal (beef or vegetarian ‘sans boef’) with wine on Saturday
- A decent t-shirt
- A goodie bag containing a snow globe
- A massive box containing a poster from Tino Sacchi that was a challenge for scooter riders to get home
- A 10-euro voucher to use on the varied food stalls whenever you liked
I can’t understand how they laid all this on for the money, to be honest. If you had to pay for all of this individually it would certainly add up to more than the ticket price.
Piles of crap
Composting toilets were a novelty for me. Imagine a lasagne made of alternating layers of toilet paper, sawdust and ‘not beef’ and you get the picture. Not only is this all recyclable but it actually smelt better than some of the blue plastic chemical bogs I’ve used in the past. Whether this positive environmental action offset gathering 1200 2-stroke scooters in one place is not something I can do the maths on. Let’s just say it offset our ecological footprint.
The scenic route
Myself, Tracy and Marco rocked up on Thursday after a 3-day, 700-mile ride up from Rimini over the Alps with only the briefest of rainstorms to bother us. That, and having to get the frame loop bracket of my LI welded by a friendly Frenchman about 150km from the rally site.
Thanks to Carrosserie Corzani for the quick coat-over-the-carb welding job
Rain stops play
For those travelling from the north, the weather was far less kind. Many endured days of rain and arrived at an overcast campsite peppered occasionally by showers.
One curry too many for these waterproofs…
By Friday the showers were infrequent enough that the campsite could dry out again in between, so a Glastonbury-style mud bath was avoided, but it still forced some changes to the programme. There was no balloon flight from the campsite in the evening, for instance. Participation in the ‘self-guided cheese and wine tour’ was extremely limited; most preferred to stay dry on the outside and wet on the inside.
Campsite food truck grub, French-style
There are always grumbles at any event: the only ones I heard were concerning the token system for drinks (which nobody ever likes but saves a lot of queueing) and the quality of the beer (Biere De Luxe). What nobody could criticise was the quality and variation of the food vans. Curries, freshly-made pizza, French platters of cheeses and oysters, kebabs etc etc. All good quality and reasonably priced.
Diagonal 85: The cinema is open
One thing that seemed to elude a lot of people, but was perfect for a rainy afternoon with a pint, was the premiere of Jaime from Supereibar Performances’ new film Diagonal 85. There was no prior information in the programme about the contents of the film, or even that he had put it together, but I managed to catch up with the third showing on Saturday afternoon, tucked away in a hidden theatre with ‘no entry’ on the door; which I ignored, like you do.
24-hour scooter race
The film didn’t deserve so many barriers; being a rather excellent documentary about the 24-hour scooter race held in 1985 in Barcelona city centre, where Vespa Largeframe and Smallframe scooters aided by tuning goodies from the likes of Pinasco, battled against home-tuned Lambrettas. Jaime has managed to track down and interview many of the Vespa and Lambretta riders whose testimonies were entertaining and translated into English as subtitles.
Want to see it?
The movie is already available as a DVD but hopefully, the film will make its way onto YouTube shortly. If you have any interest in classic scooter racing then it’s a must-watch. You can buy a copy here for £16.50 and it includes a free A2 -sized limited edition poster designed by Jaime.
Get your chopper out
The hall areas of the campsite were so vast that it was possible to display scooters inside: the Lambretta Chopper Club made up one of the biggest displays with many of the machines ridden to the event; which was great to see.
As if to prove that bodywork is over-rated, the hall where the goodie bags were distributed from held a display of some beautiful open-framed models.
Repairs
One regular feature of the Euro-rallies are the repair stalls, where those who’ve suffered mechanical traumas on the way down (at least those who made it to Magny Cours anyway) could obtain help from on-site tech Peter McNally.
Not everyone successfully made it to France without incident; so our best wishes to Phil and Ed Bush and Nic Cicutti on their recoveries.
Saturday
Given that most of the previous days’ ride-outs proved to be largely wash-outs, due to never-ending showers, my only ambition for Saturday was to join the guided (by bikers) ride to Nevers town centre, scheduled for 11:30 am.
Never say Nevers
Sadly, the day dawned once more with rain. As soon as there was a break in the weather the ride-out seemed to depart half an hour early, leaving stragglers scurrying out of the site to catch up. In the end we couldn’t be arsed to try, so Nevers town centre remains a mystery to me.
Thrash it
Those who wanted to inflict further torture on their engines could test them on the dyno brought by Sam from Lambretta Finder Belgium. I met one friend from Munich who had managed to demolish the 5-speed box in his Targa Twin reedvalve on the dyno, and spent the rest of the day rebuilding it with a begged 4-speed gearbox. Well, if you want to play then sometimes you have to pay…
Civilised – 8 pm
The culmination of the event would always be the Gala Dinner on Saturday night, with the French Lambretta Club members and families working very hard to prepare the hall and work the bar. The meal was excellent with some notable members of the Lambretta community tackling the table wine (and others) with epic levels of enthusiasm.
Uncivilised – 10 pm
After the 4-course meal the table staff wisely came around to collect the glasses, to prevent them from getting broken, only for one particularly well-pickled Lambrettista to accidentally trip up the waitress with a tray full of glasses before revisiting his dinner. I’ve always admired scooterists who can manage to go from puddles of vomit and back to the dancefloor within a short period.
Casa Performance raffle prize
There was a short break in proceedings for the drawing of the raffle prize: a lovely CP SST265-powered Series 2 restored by La Maison du Scooter (Casa Lambretta France). This was won by Bilko (of Bilko’s Oily Blog fame) from Ulster Lambretta Club; who’d only purchased two €10 tickets. He seemed quite emotional, as you would be for such a prize but was easily persuaded to start and rev it in the hall. Obviously, there are now the financial, logistical and bureaucratic hurdles of Brexit to negotiate before he gets it home, but that’s the power of populist politics for you…
London Lambretta Club’s Jerry, dressed to impress…
Running like clockwork
A vast amount of the planning of the event was done by legendary scooter racer Tony Tessier, who now resides in France and was vice president of the LCF. He admits that this style of event is not really his bag, so the vast majority of the trophies and ‘president’s chat’ sections were scheduled earlier in the day to prevent the post-meal period becoming an endless back-slap-and-clap festival of the type beloved in some countries, but guaranteed to kill any party mood.
Death by Ska
Instead, after a short round of chat it was on with the party lead by a French Ska band who were – how shall I put this delicately – more dedicated to the cause of trying to get people to dance than they were successful. After what seemed like hours of Ska water-boarding we finally admitted defeat and retired to the comforts of our glamping pod and earplugs.
In our absence, the DJs took over and a lone be-stickered scooter dealer recovered sufficiently from his stupor to shake his rump to the funk. It was a 9 from the judges.
Early departures
Sunday began at around 6 a.m. as the first scooters heading north began to leave the campsite in order to beat yet-more rain showers predicted to arrive from the west.
In all, the weather was really the only thing that let down a very well-organised event that the Lambretta Club of France should be very proud to have hosted. It catered for almost every type of Lambretta enthusiast, while also offering very good value for the ticket price.
Shocking
We hung around long enough for the hot eggs to arrive for breakfast, at the same time as the first of the rain arrived, meaning we’d set off once more in waterproofs. I got maybe 100km away before my rear shock disassembled itself, with the body losing all its damping oil over the engine and rear tyre. Considering that Elba was a pretty trouble-free rally with the panels only taken off once, sadly I couldn’t say the same about France.
As my friend Alan often says, riding a Lambretta is a little like supporting a shit football team: brief moments of unbridled joy interspersed with long periods of pain and disappointment. Scotland fans will know exactly what he means…
Text and Images: Sticky
Rallery
There are plenty more photos in the gallery above…
