Seven days without riding.

It’s strange to contemplate a full week without riding my mountain bike but I have something very different to do. I’m riding by scooter to the Netherlands, Belgium and France with 6 good friends. We tend to focus such trips to Europe on commemorating the wars and in this case we’ll be visiting areas on the Western Front of World War 1. I was expecting a new scooter to arrive by now but due to Covid it’s long delayed so I’ve had to borrow an old 2 stroke with 4 gears. It looks like a Vespa but in fact it’s origins aren’t even Italian. It was made in India by Bajaj who made Vespas under license from 1963. After 1971 they continued with basically the same scooters made under their own name and above is a Bajaj Chetak Classic from 1998. The design is that of a pre 1977 Vespa and this example has since been fitted with a 150 cc motor from a Vespa Sprint.

It promises to be a good trip with 3 nights in the Belgian town of Ieper (Ypres) and 2 nights on the ferry from Hull to Rotterdam. Some beer will be consumed along with whatever it is they eat in Belgium. Chocolate and waffles spring to mind. We’ve done 3 similar trips in 2017/18/19 and found Belgium to be a wonderful country. We’ll spend one day travelling south to the Somme where fierce fighting occurred, especially in the summer of 1916. I can only hope that Krishna is smiling down on the Indian scooter.

Here is a link to my account of our 2017 trip. https://mountainbiker.online/2019/05/11/our-scooter-trip-to-europe-in-2017/