Having recently returned from a 2000-mile round trip/scooter journey to the 1986 International Vespa Rally in Barcelona, Spain in the June of that year, I thought that my scooter stamina was beyond reproach. Over a beer, Mike Roberts – the then editor ofmagazine (RIP Mike) – suggested to me, as the magazine’s ‘roaming reporter’, that we should conduct a Pepsi Challenge-type comparison run from Land’s End to John O’Groats between the well-established Vespa PX200 and the ‘new kid on the block’ Vespa T5 125cc. After initially spraying the contents of my mouth out in shock (such a waste of good beer, lol), bravado made me agree and the die was cast. I won’t regurgitate the preparations for this venture as these were amply recorded in issue 11 of magazine. Suffice to say that the man who many scooterists (myself included)
