A year certainly passes by quickly, as it seems that we’d only just gotten over the last edition of the Lui Tour, before this one came looming upon us. Now into its 4th edition, the organisers, Bruno Pisa from ‘Scooter Italiano’ along with Fabio & Alan of ‘TV Scooter Garage’ (TVSG) weren’t going to get away with capping the number of participants at 50 as they’d hoped for.

As Bruno put it, “We had to accept more than that or we’d have been lynched!” In the end, it was the possible hotel rooms that dictated the places, which came in at a heady 72. That’s a lot of people with Bertone’s finest, whichever way you look at it.

The Lui Tours are open to anyone who rides a Luna Line (Lui, Luna, Vega, Cometa) Lambretta smallframe – with the sole exception of one, lone J50, ridden by Kimberly, as she was present at the first tour when the total of those partaking were just 12 people.

Any room at the inn?

As word has spread about the Tour, the number of people wanting a slice of the action has also risen and even this year, a lot of people had to be turned away. One slight difference between this year’s Tour and previous editions was the idea to use the same hotel for both Saturday and Sunday night, which meant both the participants and organisers could leave all luggage in one place, rather than constantly unloading and reloading everything each day.

A huge headache trying to plan an event like this is to find a suitable hotel that is prepared to have most, if not all of their rooms taken up for only a weekend, just as Italy is entering full-on holiday season. Most hotels want their guests to book for a solid week, so it was with a lot of work and more than a little luck that the hotel chosen as the base for the Tour would turn out to be a master choice.

Nervesa Della Battaglia

Each year the starting point for the Tour alternates between the two shops owned by the organisers, and this year it fell on TVSG to welcome the Lambrettisti on Thursday. Their home town of Nervesa Della Battaglia in northern Italy has a VERY welcoming bar/restaurant and they are now well accustomed to the boisterous nature of the early arrivals looking for a jolly up.

By the time we arrived, the front of the shop was already lined with smallframes, whilst the riders made the best of the free refreshments laid on to compensate for the blistering heat. The weather can make or break an event like this, as riding 250km along tortuous mountain passes in the pissing rain soon loses its attraction, no matter how stunning the surroundings can be. After a few complaints from participants last year, this year’s plan of action was for slightly less distance on the first two days, with more time being allocated for alcoholic fuelled watering stops along the way, and for a much-reduced mileage on Sunday, thus giving those who had come from afar more time to get home afterwards. As with everyone, I kept a beady eye on the forecast on the days preceding the Tour and right up to the last minute, there were massive thunderstorms promised…that luckily never materialised. Italy was in the midst of an unprecedented heatwave and with the temperatures sitting in the mid-thirties, it meant all our little ‘peds were going to suffer some.

Pre-drinks

The Thursday beano soon got underway and scooterists being scooterists, meant that the bar area at the restaurant was instantly rammed solid. All through the evening, more and more people arrived and finally out of the grip of all things Covid, the British contingents also arrived, primarily made up of Team Salvini, Tom Petch with the York SC crew and Mark Kelly, who had come over from the Isle of Man, amongst others. We had Scott Muir from Glasgow joining the Rimini Lambretta Centre crew, as he had flown in especially for the event, to compete on his CP135 kitted Vega. The evening’s ‘entertainment’ was no less interesting than that experienced two years ago, and by the time the last arrivals joined the affray, the place was absolutely heaving with the party still in full swing when we finally left at 2 am.

With an intended, but totally unrealistic, 8 am departure time on the cards, the organisers had originally intended to send riders on their way in small groups to avoid us being a traffic hazard, instead of the usual all-aboard mass ride-off. They needn’t have worried though as most people soon took to the road the moment they had collected their goody bags, each containing a detailed road-book. The more organised had GPS units or mobile phone holders on their handlebars, whereas the slightly less organised (us included) simply opted to follow someone in front, hoping he/she had some idea where we were all heading. Now I’m no boy scout, but clocking the position of the sun told me that riding due south, when the Dolomites were due north, probably might not have been a cunning plan. After 20 minutes, our clueless, unofficially appointed ‘leader’ pulled over to ask all those following him if anyone knew where were should be heading? Backtracking north soon got us within sight of some Tailend Charlies as we began to climb up into the Dolomites.

Power to the people

Those who follow the (anti)socials will know that over the last few years the popularity of Lambretta smallframes has somewhat rocketed, due in no small part to the abundance of tuning parts now available. The range of parts from Casa Performance is now well-proven, and with the Superlui engine casing and Gran Turismo also recently joining the party, once humble 50cc machines with a meagre 1.5bhp, can now obtain performance to match largeframe scooters. Seeing groups of Luna riders sitting at 60mph no longer raises eyebrows.

The mainstay of machines partaking in this year’s event were fitted with ‘CPOne35’ or ‘Casa75’ kits, as the new ‘CPOne05’ and ‘GT110’ options were both only released a few days prior to the event. The most powerful machines present were the TVSG tuned 135 Lui that offers TS1 level performance, a Superlui with a Mugello 225 owned by project designer Thomas Dipauli, and RLCs Mickyboy, who was riding a monster 60bhp SSR265LC powered hybrid. For the first time on a Lui Dolomite Experience Tour, there were no bog-standard 50cc machines in the throng, as far as I’m aware of. The smallest being a 60cc homebrew variant with an oddball Gilera piston, something the owner of the same would regret later that day, after he holed the same and no one (unsurprisingly?) had any spares to get him back onto the tarmac.
By the time we arrived at Pedavena for the first pre-organised pitstop, most of the riders were already making the best of the refreshments on offer – all included within the price of the entry ticket. The first minor problems had already come to light en-route and the scourge of last year’s event i.e. rear hubs, had already taken one victim, albeit it was soon replaced and the rider back in the room. One thing that never ceases to amaze me on the Lui Tours is the sense of belonging and brotherhood that bonds all those taking part. Whenever anyone encounters even a minimal problem, they are soon surrounded by others offering parts, tools, or to help out. Okay, every breakdown also provides ample opportunity for piss-taking and embarrassing photos, but unless the problem is terminal and requires the sweeper van, no-one gets left behind.

Fill me up… slowly

Luna Line Lambrettas all suffer from one defect that is somewhat harder to overcome: the diminutive petrol tank. With a capacity of just over 5 litres on offer, anyone considering riding any distance, if their machine is powered by anything over the factory fitted 50 or 75cc, will also need a jerry can. The other ballache is the design of the tank itself, which incorporates a filler tube neck that sits almost flush with the bottom of the tank. This makes for painfully slow refuelling and anyone hoping to carry out a Formula One speed top-up is going to get drenched in fuel splash-back. This inevitably meant that at each petrol station, the time needed for 70 riders to carry out the task in hand was of biblical proportions.

The designated route began taking us higher and higher into the mountains and by the time we were at Croce D’Aune Pass, the scenery was breathtaking. Something aesthetically less spectacular was the number of weekend warriors on their overpowered rice rockets, all trying to fathom out who, and what we were? It’s difficult to look pleased with yourself because you’ve got to the top of the mountain on your BMW, when a humble 4bhp Vega pulls up alongside you and steals your show. To be fair, after answering multiple curious questions from the ageing biker brigade over the course of the weekend, they would normally be nothing short of super-impressed by our high-altitude adventures on small wheels.

The Lunatic roadshow continued up and over the Rolle Pass and literally every time we rounded another corner, or passed though another valley, ever more spectacular views did their best to distract you from keeping an eye on where you were supposed to be pointing your front wheel. The colours of the fauna were as intense as anything I’d ever seen; as if someone had switched the ‘saturation’ settings to the absolute max. This is scootering country at its very best, make no mistake. The beauty of the Dolomites is that there are dozens of mountain Passes to choose from and this offers the organisers the possibility to ensure we hardly ever had to resort to riding a route used in previous editions.

Contrary to some of the establishments we have frequented in previous Tours, the staff at our hotel couldn’t have been more friendly, once they had gotten over the initial shock of what (they thought) they might be letting themselves in for. There are some REALLY lairy characters on the Lui Tours – strangely mostly of Tuscan origin – and their antics, during both the evening meal and following jolly up, initially caused the staff some unfounded concern. Despite a few broken glasses and overturned chairs, they soon realised that the boisterous nature of their guests wasn’t doing anyone, or anything any harm (above all, their till takings) and they also let on that they had never, ever seen so much alcohol consumed in one evening.

Free beer

Saturday’s ride took us even further up into the mountains. The idea of the Tour is to complete a couple of mountain passes each day, with pitstops every 50km (30 miles) at places such as bars, typical alpine restaurants, or, as was the case this year, a beer manufacturer. At all these places, every rider could trade in one of the small tickets found in the event goody bag, for drinks and food without splashing any cash. It simply doesn’t get any better than that, and judging by the smiles of all those walking around with a cooling Spritz to hand, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

The lunch stop was at Malga Gran Pian, smack bang in the middle of a protected nature reserve, where we had to park up the scooters and then take a 1km walk through the forest to arrive at the restaurant. Once again, the organisers had excelled themselves by firstly organising a security guard to keep an eye on our ‘peds whilst we were away, and secondly, taking into account the fact some riders were of an age whereby an uphill march in the 35°c heat might not be such a good idea, so a shuttle bus was waiting to ferry them to the destination.

All the gear but no idea

Back in the saddle for the ride towards the hotel gave us some chuckles as we watched Mickyboy doing leather-clad bikers on each hairpin bend. He’d sit right on their tail, wait for them to enter a corner – thinking they were giving it some large – before overtaking them on the outside in the midst of howling 2-stroke violence, before accelerating away with his front wheel airborne all the while. All these magical moments were captured on his GoPro, promising eternal interweb embarrassment for his victims should he ever air the same.

Jimmy Sommerville fan club

By the time we arrived at the hotel, the staff had sensibly restocked the bar and news had gotten around about a Jacuzzi hot tub some riders had discovered up on the roof, so that was soon full of sweaty scooterboys with drinks to hand. With the absence of any accompanying totty, the whole scene was more Blue Oyster Bar than Club Tropicana, but scootering as a hobby/lifestyle/passion/obsession has always been that way. Most of the returning riders had parked their scooters along the front of the hotel, and the unique spectacle of dozens of minuscule, weird Lambrettas certainly gave the locals something to gossip about for the coming months. The evening’s party was an exaggerated example of the previous night, with the addition of ‘I Moccassini’ playing a set of Italian beat covers to a receptive audience. The bar staff, now safe in the knowledge that the loons present hadn’t come to beat the place up, also joined in the party, as did the owners of the establishment. I think it’s safe to say we’ll be back there again next year.

Home run

The final day started in disarray as a few of us tried – in vain – to get a group photo of all those present. Patience is not a virtue of Luna riders it would seem, and unfortunately, before we could shoot some pics from the 5th floor of the hotel, most of those present had taken it on their toes, keen to get on with the day’s riding. Once again, two absolutely stunning passes were undertaken, albeit at a more leisurely pace, almost as if no-one wanted the Tour to come to an end. With just 100km to cover, it wasn’t long before we all found ourselves back at TVSG, to be confronted with several gazebos all set up, a full-on spit roast, ice-cold drinks and their shop Lambro decked out with both huge loudspeakers and free-for-all beer pumps. Those boys certainly know how to impress.

Every year it seems that topping the previous Tour would be an impossible task, but this 4th edition certainly did that, and some. If there was ever a right time to purchase a Luna Line Lambretta, then now is that time.

Words: Dean Orton – Speedball Publishing
Pics: Mihaela Dicianu, Paolo Catani, Elio Grillo, Scott Muir, Marco Pesce, Bruno Pisa, Luca Bertolini, Gianluca Guerra, Filippo Artuso, Marco, Giuseppe Marcon, Michele Genzo, Skika.

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