European Vespa Days – Guimaraes Portugal | RALLERY

Finally, after two years of pandemic enforced delays we could confirm our ferry bookings and look forward to packing the cooking oil sun lotion and budgie smugglers as the Euro Vespa in Portugal was given the green light.

As the Vespa World Days event this year was in Bali it was decided to also organise a Euro Vespa to have a destination that the Europeans could actually ride to. After the lush, green and moist Euro Lambretta rally in June in the beautiful Ardennes, we had the opportunity to explore the ever-changing landscape of Spain, Portugal and France in some warmer, drier weather and as it turned out we would be riding during a heatwave. In fact, scorchio was one of the most commonly used words on this trip, usually followed by feck it’s hot!

Our riding group (Staff, Helen, Pete, Narna and me) like to plan ahead of any Euro trip and in typical fashion two weeks before we were due to leave we finally agreed what we were doing and booked the ferry. We opted for the party boat out to Santander, then a few days exploring Northern Spain and into Portugal, before a 3-day stay in a lovely historic villa in Guimaraes (courtesy of Helen “Booking. Com” Rumsey) the venue for the Euro Vespa rally. That was before a nice ride back across Spain, over the Pyrenees and up through France. We were lucky to share the boat out with the Big 7 SC and Mad SC lot, so much amusement and alcohol was had. Docking early on the Sunday morning we had Guimaraes as our destination and no route planned. The weather on the coast threatened rain so we decided to head inland, what a great decision that proved to be as we discovered the stunning N621 road that snaked through the lovely Picos De Europa mountains.

As the weather was getting hotter and we’d had a good day riding we decided to treat ourselves to a cheap hotel with aircon and a pool, this became the theme for this trip, as despite carrying our camping kit with us, we decided to go posh most nights. The life of the modern day scooterist has certainly changed from the days of us kipping in bus shelters and in binbags. Maybe old age has made us less stupid or maybe it was the heatwave that made us crave aircon and swimming pools.

Vespa pilgrimage

If you have visited Northern Spain you may have seen a shell logo on signs along the road side, these mark the routes for the pilgrims heading to Santiago De Compostela. It would be rude not to see what was attracting the hundreds of walkers on route there, so we meandered our way back up over the hills to visit it ourselves. Again Rumsey Tours came up trumps with an apartment with underground parking for the scooters (and air con), right on the edge of the city centre. It did feel a bit of a cheat walking the last half mile (in flip flops) to the shell carved in the centre of the old square which marks the end of the pilgrimage, however we marked our achievement by finding a bar to celebrate in and spotted the Mad SC lot walking passed, a heavy night followed in true British scooterist abroad stylee.

From Santiago we headed to the coast to ride into Portugal, it wasn’t the most scenic part of our trip so we rode back up in to the hills and with Staff’s Sat-Nav set to avoid motorways, tolls (and tarmac in some instances), we soon stumbled on some awesome places and Rumsey Tours really struck gold with a lovely stone villa, with a pool (and aircon). Between the five of us it worked out at £20 each for the night, a bargain. Maybe we could get used to this posh scooterist living?

Judith Chalmers

On Thursday we arrived at our villa in Guimaraes, which was part of a 1000-year-old farm and boasted a pool, aircon, historic Baroque gardens and the added bonus of its own vineyard. The owner greeted us with a bottle of wine made from the grapes growing there, it tasted lovely up to the point he told us he trod it with his own feet. This is starting to feel like a Judith Chalmers holiday guide, but I promise there were scooters involved in this trip.

In fact, this is where one particular scooter joined the party. One of our group, Darren Simmonds (a.k.a. that well known old fruit, Bananaman), had ridden his Honda Maxi Scooter (a.k.a Motorbike with small wheels) to Guimaraes and had secretly arranged for someone to drop off his custom Vespa chopper “Top Banana” there, this was a particular surprise to the owner of the Villa who sent them away, not knowing what was happening. After rearranging delivery, Narna then used his chopper to buzz about all weekend, until he popped down to the Vespa Village on his own, got lost and whilst heading in the opposite direction he was stopped from joining a toll road by a helpful Portuguese builder, who loaded him into the back of his van and drove him back to the villa. Narna could fall in a cesspit and come out smelling of……..bananas!

Guimaraes has a lovely old town at its heart with plenty of bars and restaurants to keep the Vespisti entertained, fed and watered. The town had really embraced the rally with Vespas of all shapes and sizes dotted around. The museum also played host to a selection of classic Vespas and also offered some shade away from the sun.

The main venue hosting the Vespa Village was a large exhibition centre on the outskirts of town and there were plenty of stalls and bars on site, along with a large stage set up with Portuguese bands to entertain the crowd on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Two scooterist couples decided to tie the knot in Guimaraes over the weekend, congratulations to Chris and Tatjana from Austria and American’s Jennifer Parker and Daniel Rickard Jr.

The highlight for many on the Euro Vespa events is the well attended ride out that left at an hour that doesn’t exist on a Saturday morning at a rally, unfortunately we missed it as we had Friday night to sleep off and a pool to splash about in before hitting the bars again.

Gala dinner

The other highlight for many is the Gala Dinner and the chance to swap all things Vespa and Cog related, with many going home with bags full of “treasure”. The Gala dinner was in a huge hall and the national clubs gathered together on tables resulting in a colourful and loud evening as they sporadically burst into song, the Spanish having a huge number in attendance created a nice breeze with their enthusiastic flag waving. The Brits stood up in our traditional yellow t-shirts and gave a rousing rendition of Sweet Caroline with other nations joining in across the hall. With a local band singing and dancing amongst the tables throughout the evening it did have a great atmosphere and set up the partying that continued for the remainder of the night in the bars outside. The meal itself was a traditional dish of bones with some fish so probably best left there.

Sunday morning marked the end of another great Euro Vespa event, (huge thanks to the Vespa Club of Portugal). We finally saw a few spots of rain as we loaded the scooters, however normal service was soon resumed as we set off for home and the temperature steadily increased back to scorchio. Spain and Portugal do love their cobbled streets and speed bumps, so after a week of rattling our fillings loose we decided to clock up a few miles by using some main roads out of Portugal and across the flat and tinder dry part of Spain. Whilst the heatwave is great for us sun loving Brits it is less so for the countryside, as we rode across Spain we saw verges smouldering and burnt, before stumbling on a whole valley that was charcoal and still smoking, due to the unrelenting sun and heat. An experience we are now sadly seeing in the UK.

Paddy Smith

The journey home continued with cheap hotel stopovers in Salamanca and then a gorgeous remote hotel in the foothills of the Pyrenees, before a twisty ride into the clouds and over the border where we called in to visit Paddy Smith’s family and the home of his legendary Sun Run rallies at Allemans Du Dropt. It was lovely to see them after the pandemic had prevented us visiting for a few years. We finally got to use our camping kit after the Rumsey Tours booking agent (Helen) had a well-deserved night off.

The following morning I said goodbye to the rest of the usual suspects and blasted up through France to catch my ferry from Cherbourg home. Another euro trip was complete, after nearly 2300 miles riding with and meeting up with great friends, the actual Euro Vespa was the added bonus to what was another excellent adventure. With more memories created and a realisation that we like cheap accommodation and particularly aircon. I’m already looking forward to next year’s Euro trips; Vespa World Days in Switzerland and also trying to plan a scenic route to the Euro Lambretta……….in Peterborough (25 miles from where I live?!). Whatever adventures you have planned, ride safe and have fun.

Words and photos: Shaun Hodgkin
Additional photos: Tracy Nichols