New Era

Eighties

Nineties

21st Century

The Edinburgh Blues Scooter Club

Our second decade of the club initially saw very few changes to how things were. Our chairman throughout the eighties, Willie Grieve, had now stood down and we had an all new committee but little else changed. The runs were still very much the same, same venues, same entertainment, same old faces. This of course was the problem. People were starting to get bored and drift away from the scene. We still had laughs on the runs of course. Hendo re-decorating the bedroom at Great Yarmouth one year, Taff's techni-colour yawn all over the place at Southport, and the time at Morecambe when particularly amorous couple discovered to their embarrassment that the walls of the B. & B. were now here near as thick and soundproof as they thought all spring to mind. Slowly though people just stopped going runs and the N.S.R.A. disappeared. The Blues decided that if we were going to keep people interested in scootering then we were going to have to give them something different. We started off organising small local Sunday events that were a bit different. We held regular treasure hunts throughout the Lothian's, which initially proved popular, and we also began to hold the Forth Bridges Vintage Run. In its heyday the vintage run even attracted the secretary of the Veteran Vespa Club to come up on his scooter from Warwickshire to join us for the day. Gradually though as more and more clubs started having their own rallies attendance started to decline and the last real Forth Bridges run took place in 1999 with Bob Young, the chairman of the Scottish Auto-cycle Union as guest judge. Watch this space though as it may be back in some form in the future. Throughout the early nineties we also still promoted scooter sport. We organised and sponsored the Forth Valley Championship for scooterists in the local area. This involved our own sporting trial, treasure hunts, the Farmyard Rally at which we ran a gymkhana, and our own two-day Alba Rally. This helped keep a lot of people interested in scootering and saw members of the Blues take place in scooter sport events down south. Our most successful competitor was Tam Kane who was Scottish Champion on numerous occasions, as well as winning various classes in the Vespa Club Championship, and grass track events at Great Yarmouth, and Northampton. We also had a team in English grass track events, which also enjoyed success. As the decade wore on though interest also started to wane in organised scooter sport and the Forth Valley championship and many of the smaller sporting events folded due to lack of interest. Although even today many of the rallies feature a gymkhana or grass tracking as one of the events. Although the club attended some race meetings as far back as 1984 at Three Sisters in Wigan there was never that much interest in it. Member Mark McGillivray took part in a number of races in the early nineties but we ere never able to generate much enthusiasm for that aspect of scootering. The main event, which we held during the nineties, was the Alba Rally. Originally this was a two-day mainly sporting rally and it was held in Fife, at Crail Airfield. A welcoming disco would be held at a local hotel on the Friday night. This was usually only attended by club members, a few local scooterists and the Lancashire scooterists like Ginger and Max, and Tina from Blackpool who always supported our do's. Saturday saw a host of competitions from the serious sprints, and gymkhanas to the more fun events of the slow ride and sack race. There was also an on-site ridden custom show to keep everyone amused. Night-time saw us up and converting the local community centre into a decent venue for the presentation dance. Despite the difficulties with the distance between venues and using three different venues over the weekend or maybe even because of them the rally always seemed to be a success.

Eventually though the problems of using Crail and the declining interest in scooter sport caused us to look for a new venue and we found ourselves moving to Dumfries. The new venue caused a change in how things were organised and the rally became more of a social affair with a gymkhana or grass track event still taking place but more fun events being added. These took the form of tug-o-war, and yard of ale competitions. Our first venue in Dumfries was a magnificent hotel in its own grounds with excellent camping. Sadly though after our first year there the place went bankrupt and we moved camp to a new venue the Embassy Hotel, which this year hosted the Lambretta Club rally. A new venue allowed us to again change things and freshen them up. For the first time we started to feature bands at the rally such as 'The Golden Hour' and the Deceivers. We held the rally very successfully there for a couple of years before disputes with the management led to us abandoning holding the rally at all. With such a busy scootering calendar in Scotland these days it is unlikely that it will be held again in the foreseeable future. Throughout the nineties the Blues had a very strong and active lambretta contingent in the club. Many of our members and ex-members are now leading lights in the Lambretta Club of Scotland. This led to us attending a number of Euro Lambretta rallies over the years with members popping up in Italy, Holland and Germany. A favourite event of the clubs throughout the nineties was the Farmyard Rally. Not surprising really as it is right on our doorstep. We always took a good turnout to the rally and most years won the trophy for Best Turned Out Club. For me this rally has a lot of fun memories such as the time Telf tripped over the log used for the pillow fights at Auchengray and spent half the night sleeping in a pool of mud. He was so hung over in the morning he didn't notice that half his face was caked in mud until he got home. There was also the last stretch of country roads every year going to the rally on the Friday night when the Henderson brothers who always wore their parkas to the event would take off their helmets and kid on they were 'Jimmy'. Towards the end of the nineties we saw a lot of members from the early days of the seventies and eighties get back into scootering and re-join the club. Whilst this meant that the average age of the club jumped up considerably it was nice to see that they still felt welcome in the club and wanted to help take it forward.
At the Farmyard Rally in 1999 we were approached by some friends in Manchester who were interested in joining the Blues and so by the end of the weekend the Manchester branch of the Blues was born. From the early nineties there has been a branch of the club started by ex-members in Clwyd, North Wales. The formation of the new branch led us to renew our ties with the Welsh members and to consider whether this was the right way forward for the club. Within a couple of months we also had active branches of the club in Fife, and the Borders. 1999 also saw us launch our first internet web site. The initial site was extremely basic but we felt that it was important to get out there and start to make contact with scooterists all over the world via the world wide web. A new site is currently being designed and look out for more details of that soon. So it was with a growing club, and with our first venture onto the Internet the Blues entered the new century, and our third decade as a club with a sense of optimism.