106 Stirling 

HOW IT ALL STARTED…

Stirling Vespa Club (VCB Branch No. 106)

By the summer of 1958 only two of the five Scottish branches of the Vespa Club of Britain were still standing - the Edinburgh, Ayr and Dunfermline clubs all having called it a day - and of the two remaining Aberdeen Vespa Club were also on the verge of folding. But a branch was about to be launched in Stirling.

The forming of Branch No. 106 was granted on August 18, 1958 following a phone call to the VCB on the final day before registrations closed for the national rally at Billing Aquadrome near Northampton. The Stirling club’s inaugural get together was in September, as seven members planned the 800-mile round trip to Northampton - returning home from their first scooter rally with trophies for the furthest travelled club and furthest travelled individual rider.

Acquiring permanent premises in time for the start of the 1959 rally season ‘106’ met weekly on a Friday - the initial get togethers consisting of talks on map reading and first aid, film shows, maintenance nights and record nights - with runs organised for every Sunday. A year after forming, their first “venture” was hailed a huge success - a Scottish Country Barn Dance, the club making use of a barn at Hillhead Farm in Cambusbarron where the Friday meets had by this time moved to the Institute Hall.

Being on the doorstep of the Highlands the club’s weekly runs were mostly well over the hundred miles mark and always well attended. Fittingly the ‘Gateway to the Highlands’ theme formed the centrepiece of the club’s cog badge - a portcullis with roadway winding through and hills in the background.

Taken from an article in the August 1960 edition of Vespa News they really hadn’t quite known what to expect when they started out or how far it would go. “It wasn’t long before a few enthusiastic owners found themselves starting a club-thing that was as much a mystery to themselves as it was to anyone else! Gradually they began to realise just how big it could become and recruitment started. Now, twenty one months later, the club membership has gone past the fifty mark and is increasing fairly steadily.”

Feeling their way from the start, and before discovering the competitive joys of road trials and gymkhanas, they were clearly proud of a feeling of solidarity and spirit of comradeship that already prevailed during those early years. “There are no groups within the club, no cliques, no individualists, no bosses, no stars”, they proclaimed on more than two occasions. “Just Vespa-ists”.

By 1960 scooter sport had been introduced north of the border, thanks to the Glasgow Vespa Club and, like the other Scottish branches, members of the Stirling club were relishing the challenge and becoming more “competition-minded”.

An extract from Vespa News in 1960 gives an idea of the kind of events that were taking place in Scotland and a measure of how well Stirling Vespa Club were doing at the halfway stage of their second full rally season:

Ayr Treasure Hunt - 3rd, 4th and 5th place;

Dundee indoor rally - 3rd place and overall rally champion;

The Highland Scoot - best Vespa team award;

Scoot Caledonia - seven out of the first eleven riders were from Stirling VC;

Largs road trial & rally - 2nd, 3rd, and 7th place in the road trial and overall rally champion; and

Scottish finals regularity trials - 2nd place.

The Stirling club themselves hosted their first major event on Sunday, August 15, 1960 in the form of a timed road trial, and hill climb of approximately half a mile, controlled by field telephones handled and erected by the local Civil Defence Unit. Through the likes of Neil Young they were starting to build a proficient reputation - bettered only in Scotland by Glasgow VC - and the following year club captain Chic Wotterspoon won the Vespa Club of Scotland Challenge Cup, gained when he completed a difficult gymkhana course at Perth in May 1961.

Two years later, at the Vespa Club of Britain’s national rally at Leamington Spa, Ted Frater won the trophy for national gymkhana champion (and also came first in the ‘solo spiral’). And fellow Stirling member Bill Cairns was runner up!

One of the longer surviving of the Scottish Vespa clubs, for how long ‘106’ ran I’ll need to get the finger out and find out. But if you can help - any information on the Stirling Vespa Club or any copies of old Vespa News from the late sixties / seventies that you wouldn’t mind scanning for mention of Stirling or any of the other Scottish branches - please feel free to share it this way.

But for now that’s how it all started! Fast-forward to 2009 and Graeme McMaster resurrected the club and, to be honest, I don’t know if they’ve currently got the required three (VCB) members from the Stirling area needed to keep the club active.

Paul Hird