BSRA #5 CLEETHORPES NATIONAL SCOOTER RALLY 2022 | RALLERY

For nearly a quarter of a century, the town of Cleethorpes has featured very highly on the National Scooter Rally calendar. The rally has evolved massively since the British Scooter Riders Association first started visiting back in the late 1990s. Various different campsites and night do venues have been used over 25 years of visits.

The Old Showground

1998 was the first time the rally was given National Rally status, it used the original ‘old showground’ (adjacent to the Meridian Showground that accommodates the rally now). The custom show and dealer’s stalls were on this site, and both the Friday and Saturday night dos were in the Winter Gardens. It’s hard to imagine how these two small venues coped with us, but then I guess the numbers attending rallies were far smaller in those days. The layout of the rally stayed like that each year until 2004 when the daytime custom show moved from the campsite up to the Winter Gardens. The 2006 rally was the last time the Winter Gardens was used as a venue (it was demolished) and also the last time the old showground campsite was used. This was also the only year that the Cleethorpes rally didn’t have National Rally status.

Stamford Club

The 2007 rally was all change – a new campsite at the Stamford Club on Clee road, the Friday night do in the Pier, and the Saturday night do at the Beachcomber campsite (our first visit there). It stayed like that each year until 2011. The only change being that at the 2010 rally the Friday night venue was in the town centre nightclub “Amishi” also known as the Colosseum.

The 2012 rally saw both night venues in the Pier and our final visit to the Clee Road campsite. By 2013 the rally started its new home at the Meridian Showground campsite, with both nighttime dos at the Beachcomber, and has followed that format ever since. Live bands have only played the rally on five occasions, the last being ‘Who’s Who’ at the 2011 rally. Cleethorpes rally has always been on in the summer months of June or July and therefore has never been a Bank Holiday rally.

• The Old Showground (Original campsite) has been used most out of the three official sites used for Cleethorpes rallies so far
• The 2002 end-of-year scooter rally printed patch, made by Crusader Promotions, mistakenly omitted Cleethorpes off the list of that year’s rallies
• Despite being mostly dry, even Cleethorpes has occasionally suffered from extreme weather

Anyway, let’s get on to this year’s Cleethorpes rally…

This year’s eagerly anticipated return rally seemed a longer gap than all the other rallies that suffered the Covid restrictions, probably because in 2019 Cleethorpes was off the calendar anyway – hence it feeling like we’d not been for a while.

Early arrivals on Friday morning were greeted with dark skies, thunder and lightning storms over the town. Many riders, including myself, turned up at the campsite entrance very wet, but soon the worst of it was over. With tents erected, it then felt just like the rest of this year’s rallies – as though we’d never been away. The fully self-contained Meridian Showground really is a great venue giving a very chilled and laid-back vibe, but with all you need for a rally weekend within touching distance. There’s a small, and very convenient, little pop-up bar in the middle of the dealer’s area. That was kept very busy all afternoon with three pints for a tenner! Scooterists had a few beers and prepared for a first night back in the Beachcomber club in four long years.

The ‘no live bands’ policy, makes Cleethorpes night dos stand out from all of the other National Rallies, but most people agree the rally is better for it, with DJs playing to a packed audience and bar all night. It was certainly a busy start to the rally.

Saturday morning saw many early risers on the campsite, some of whom feel the need to check to see if their scooter still starts and revs up OK at a very early hour, before turning them off and going back to their tent?!

One trend that is good to see is the amount of classic scooter-riding youngsters who are appearing on rallies at the minute.

Walking around the campsite I saw some hard-partying French scooterists who had ridden 700 kms to attend the rally (respect), and also a large group of Dutch scooterists from Good Beer SC who were sampling the UK scooter scene, which is cool to see.

Quite a few repairs were going on across the site as well. I heard that Electrickery wizard Anthony Tambs was kept busy with help and repairs at his stall, Scootronics.

As the day wore on, lots of day-trippers seemed to come and go in waves keeping the whole site bustling but the camping area looked much quieter than is normal at the Meridian site. Those that hadn’t headed off into the town’s pubs were entertained by the on-site DJ and sound system provided by ‘Howling Mad, Mad Dog’. He seemed to be woken up very early by the scooters on site so cranked his disco up to the max to make sure everybody else was awake. Just like a rally site in the 1980s.

The area outside and around the campsite has evolved a lot over the years that the rally has been visiting, with a pub, a hotel, and numerous fast-food chains all being built on what was once just waste ground. They all certainly get plenty of custom from us over the rally weekend.

I’ve used this pun before but it takes an OLYMPIC effort from the organisers to make this MONSTER of a scooter rally happen, but without the loyal support of 1000s of scooter riders it would simply be a meeting of two well-known scooter clubs in a field.
My thanks go out to all the individuals that give up their time to make the rally happen.

And massive respect goes to all of you that climb aboard a scooter to go there and support it.

Ride safe SLUKers
Words: Col
Photos: Col and Booga