How many years have we been waiting for a new and exciting National Rally destination? Well, last weekend the South West boys and girls came up trumps with Weymouth and if you didn’t bother to go you missed out big style.

As a destination, Weymouth has everything, it’s a particularly well kept English seaside town with pretty harbour flanked on both sides by vibrant bars, pubs and restaurants. It has beautiful golden sandy beaches with quintessentially British multi-coloured beach huts, a ladies beach volleyball competition, wall-to-wall sunshine (disclaimer: those two points may not be on 365 days per year) and an abundance of pubs.

Just the two of us

The weekend started early for me with a lovely Thursday ride down to Weston-Super-Mare. This was to break up the 250-mile journey and use up a hotel booking I couldn’t otherwise cancel. Just myself on my stage 4 200 S1 Framebreather and the missus on her S2 RT225 meant we made good time and were soon out sampling this familiar town. It felt like a mini holiday rather than the usual mad Friday dash to a rally. It also only left us 70 miles of stunning Somerset A and B roads to ride the following morning before we got to Dorset. A great start to the weekend.

Because our route was a bit off-piste we only saw a couple of scooters as we got closer to town but reports from people using the more direct route said the ride was reminiscent of a 1980s scooter rally with loads of scooters everywhere.

Riding into a new (or new to me) town is always more exciting than one you’ve been to multiple times and Weymouth didn’t disappoint. We planned to ride straight to the campsite to have a look around but we’d not passed a garage for the last 20 miles of the ride and we were both running on fumes (73 miles on standard Lambretta tanks is pushing it a bit) so went straight to the B&B instead.

Out and about on Friday saw us finding our feet (and friends) as we checked out a few olde worlde back street pubs. Probably a few more than we planned to because we didn’t get to the main do at the Pavilion until gone midnight. Aside from that venue, SWSC were also running a very busy soul do in the Gloucester pub and a disco on the campsite, which meant in effect they needed three times as many staff as usual. It also meant we didn’t get to see everybody over the weekend because we were spread out across town. Not that it mattered though because there were familiar faces in every bar in town and a great atmosphere wherever you went.

Late entry

I’d like to say we were sensible and had an early night but that would be a complete lie. Instead, we found ourselves in a late-night bar until 5 am after the do had finished, then at a party in a friend’s Air B&B before three of us did the walk of shame – strolling in straight to breakfast for 9:30 am in our disco gear. It’s not big and it’s not clever but nobody realised so I think we got away with it…

By the time I surfaced after a morning nap it was too late to go up and see the custom show (see image gallery above), ride out or peruse the stalls up at the campsite (a heavily sunburnt Booga was there in my absence) so it was a quick shower and straight back out feeling less enthusiastic about the rest of the day than I’d have liked.

Custom show results

Best of show: Breaking Rocks
Best Lambretta: Series 1 (491 UXY)
Best Vespa: Little Boy Soldier
Best Streetracer: Rizla
Best Engineered: Itsy Bitsy
Best Cutdown/Chopper: Stray Cats
Best Restoration: LD 150 (PSK 634)
Best Paint: Psychological Damage
Best Mural: Breaking Rocks
Best Auto: Guy Martin

An English summer

It was great to see an English seaside town making full use of the heatwave, the beach was packed and the sea was busy with people cooling off and families having fun. Even without the rally Weymouth would have been packed. We just added to the flavour.

Saturday gave us a chance to check out the harbour side bars and the atmosphere down there was lovely and chilled. Posh yachts bobbed about in the deep blue sea, fishing boats sat at the quayside and hundreds of scooterists filled the bars until the sun set on another beautiful Dorset summer’s day. We were even lucky enough to find a good rockabilly band in one of the pubs.

Basketcase were entertaining the crowds in the Pavilion by the time we wobbled our way up to the do and it doesn’t matter how many times you see these lads, they always give it 100% and whip the crowd into a frenzy. After an Elvis encore, followed by ‘Bring me Sunshine’ their eclectic show came to an end. This left Tezza on the decks to keep the party banging until chucking out time, which he did admirably.

As we walked past the Gloucester the soul do was still in full swing but still a little tired from Friday’s shenanigans we did the sensible thing and just walked on by.

This just left us with a 250-mile ride home in the morning on what was the hottest day of the year (until Monday, Tuesday…). Despite the heat, the scooters never missed a beat and we were home at a reasonable enough time for a traditional post-rally takeaway.

Well done South West Scooter Clubs

It takes a leap of faith and plenty of work to put a brand new event on the calendar. Weymouth was certainly worth all that effort for the punters! It has to be the best new rally town we’ve been to in a couple of decades or more. It’s also a town that you can’t do justice in just one visit, there’s loads more to see and do so I hope we’ll be going back again soon. SWSC usually alternate their summer rallies, so in theory, we should be back to Weston next year but I’d like very much to be going to Weymouth instead.

A fantastic weekend, well done to all involved, you smashed it!

Words: Iggy
Photos: Booga
Additional photos: Iggy

Be sure to flick through the main rally images above.