Isle of Wight 2007

Isle of Wight 2007

Isle of Wight weekend - Photos taken by Dave and Judy, Pete and Tina.

Once again we decided to ride down , setting off on Thursday at 8a.m. from Holywell meeting up with Pete and Tina at Whitchurch. Superb weather, scooters both enjoying the cool morning air. A brief stop at Kidderminster for coffee was followed by a very long stop in a layby at Gloucester when Pete's SX developed horrible heavy mechanical noises! Recovery was the only option. So Pete and Tina returned to Whitchurch on a truck while Dave and Judy went on alone to Cheriton and our B &B for the night, 220 miles from Holywell. Imagine our surprise at 9.30 the next morning when Pete and Tina turned up on Tina's new Vespa LXV having left Whitchurch at 4am! True scooterists! We all caught the boat lunch time Friday despite Dave's navigation error taking him away from Portsmouth towards London! We arrived on the Island in glorious weather which was to last the entire weekend. After dumping our cases we met up with Bernie, Tracy, Adam and Linney on Sandown seafront for a drink.

On Saturday morning we all left the B&B together for the short ride to the rally campsite and parts fair at Smallbrook Stadium, meeting up with John and Darren (Supertune) on their stall, also meeting up with Tommo, Gary and Mark. On Saturday afternoon we visited the custom show at the Ice Rink just in time to see Carl Ceplis win a bag of trophies with his scooter Zulu. Well done Carl!

As usual there was a great variety of venues for evening do's, both in Sandown and Ryde. The highlights for us this year were the Liquid Lounge(the Small Fakers) and The Town Club in Star Street, Ryde which featured Ska , Bluebeat, reggae and two tone music with much lively dancing and with bitter at £1.30 a pint Dave was in his element!

Sunday morning saw us all heading for Ryde seafront for the mass ride-out. This year an attempt was to be made on the GUINESS Book of Records for the largest uninterupted convoy of scooters. The holders of this record are Italians with 400 scooters. We believe the record was broken with something like 1100 scooters! We await confirmation.

On Monday we all packed up ready for the journey back to the mainland, Bernie and co retrieving their hire van in Southampton and Dave and co riding back up to Cheriton and the B&B, where the owners of the B&B laid on a BBQ for us and invited other friends including Chris from the Eastleigh Spitfires SC who helped us out last year when we broke down in the village! (The same damned SX!)

We had an uneventful ride home on the Tuesday, sad that it was all over but glad to be off the scooter. Hope to be there next year.

Dave and Judy