Vespa World Days is Europe's largest scooter get together held every year in a different country and this year it is in my home country in the North of Ireland for the first time ever.
The event is always organised by the Vespa Club of that country and in conjunction with the Vespa Club of Italy and Piaggio who have a big hand in funding it.
A few years ago (in 2012) when the event was held in London at the Millennium Dome, Retrospective Scooters offered mechanical help and assistance to all riders of the geared scooters attending, our aim was to keep everyone mobile and do running repairs to those that needed it. There was plenty of work to do as scooterists converge on the event from all over Europe and many, without our assistance, would have no way to make it home!
This year we are coming back for more and we are bringing an even larger team with us this time.
The focal point of this year's World Vespa Days rally is around the Titanic Quater by the old Harland & Wolf shipyard in Belfast. Retrospective will be set up in the car park under two marquees in the Vespa Village area which will be full of stalls offering goods for the scooterist. I will have a team of seven of us there to help scooterists. Myself, three of my mechanics and three good friends and mechanics from back home (local to Belfast) who have volunteered to help.
We will stock as many spares as we can but there can always be something we run out off or simply do not have with us, for that we depend on other stalls and dealers at the event to have a good supply of parts.
Our labour services during the event are completely free, we have a donation box if anyone we help wants to thanks us and it gets us a beer and something to eat at the end of the day. From experience we know it will be very busy but we love the chance to give something back to the amazing scooter community!
We just charge for what ever parts we use off course, we can't give stuff away!
I found last time that clutches and exhausts seemed to be our biggest breakdowns, some electrics and sometimes it was simply a knackered old engine that really we could do nothing about especially in the amount of time we had. But rest assured we try our best and we have some of the UK's most experienced scooter mechanics with us.
We shall be on site from Thursday evening on 14th June.
The whole team and I enjoyed the last one and people where really friendly and delighted for our assistance and we get alot of satisfaction when we get scooters running again.
This year I'm back at home and I'm proud to be doing this in my home country - please make sure to come and say hello even if nothing is broken!
