the armadillo scooter blog

Hello fellow scooterists,

I’m Dan, a keen scooter enthusiast and member of Manchester Lyons S.C.. The folks at Armadillo have kindly asked me to do a bit of blogging on scooters and scootering around the World and I’ve happily agreed.

To start us off I’ll briefly recall my mini-adventure last year from Manchester into the Scottish highlands on a unmodified (at the time!) PX125 complete with girl on back and various large bags and camping gear.

Kirkwall in the Orkney Isles was my ultimate destination and we got there succesfully via lots of pretty towns and cities and some gorgeous scenery directly through the centre of the highlands. The photo is of some firth or other. I can’t remember if it was the first, third, fourth or fifth firth we had seen. Blimey.

I didn’t see a single other scooter in about a week and half but there were lots of motorcyclists touring and some of them couldn’t believe we were doing this on a 125 with 10′ wheels, neither could I at times. One German couple on a fancy BMW bike were that amazed when we spoke to them that they actually tailed us from Taigh Iain Ghròt (or John o’ Groats when I’m not spitting) for a couple of miles with the girl on the back taking pictures of us from a variety of angles. It was the first time I’d ever been ‘papped’ and a very unusual experience.

One snapped clutch cable in a dodgy Glasgow suburb while on route to my cousin’s wedding reception was the only techinical issue encountered, not bad for a 1000+ mile round trip eh. She also held up well on the steep gradients for the majority of the time, the only really hard-going bit was a paricularly nasty stretch of the A9 near Aviemore where a few more CC wouldn’t have gona amiss. Vespas, great until you tinker with them.

It was a fantastic trip and if you can get the good weather as we did, it’s a wonderful country for a wee bit of scootering.

If the fancy takes you, you can read more of my travelling tales (sadly not all scooter related) at http://sendthebuggerback.com.

Dan Bowen
Scooterist
http://sendthebuggerback.com