Into The Sunset
Another amusing scooter story from the past.
We set off from York to the rally at Keswick one Friday afternoon. This was 1981 and the scooter scene was getting to be very popular. I reckon we took about 20 plus scooters, many of them two-up and one van (bit optimistic with the one van!). Sure enough the first breakdown was after 10 miles and the scooter was thrown into the back of the van. This and other delays meant we arrived at Settle about 8pm.
We didn’t have much in the way of tents – it was mainly sleeping bags with the ‘orange survival bags’ for protection against the rain. With this in mind we parked up in a pub car park in the middle of nowhere, about two miles out of Settle. After a few pints in the pub and an ‘okay’ from the landlord about kipping in his car park, we decided to go into Settle for a few more drinks. A designated driver was appointed to drive the van (yeah whatever, this was the 80s!) and a load of us piled into the back. There must have been 20 of us at least! Some decided to stay with the scooters, which worked out well as the van was full to the brim.
Settle proved a good night out and closing time came too quickly. We’d been talking to a group of locals, mainly lasses but a few ‘Mod wannabe’ local lads as well. They said there was a club in town which was open till 2am… this sounded good, so we followed them to the club. The ‘club’ actually turned out to be a group of huge Portakabins bolted together, a bit rustic from the outside, but hey-ho better than nothing. The locals said the doormen might be funny about letting us in, so they would go in first and let us in through the back door. Fair enough. The door was duly opened and we marched single file down a corridor, toilets to the right, which opened out into the club… and a semi-circle of bouncers and locals waiting to greet us.
I don’t think it was a set-up by the group who had taken us there, I just think it was obvious what was happening when 20 strangers started walking out of the toilets. I’d say we had an average age of about 19, we were just a bunch of lads… and what stood facing us was a group of red-neck locals who looked nearer 30 than 20… they were men, proper men! Sure enough a brawl ensued, with both sides suffering casualties and claims of feats of heroism. We were finally forced outside where some minor scuffles finished things off. Battered and bruised we made our way back to the van, which was parked in the town centre.
We stood around waiting for everyone to get back, talking of the night’s events and how we’d faired. It was at this point that the police turned up. One sergeant walked over to us, leaving his driver behind the wheel of their panda car. The sergeant was friendly and asked if we’d seen any strangers who’d been involved in a fight at a nightclub? I looked around at our motley crew, black eyes, bleeding noses, ripped shirts, grazed knuckles and worried looks. We said we hadn’t seen or heard anything but would keep our eyes open. He wished us well as we piled into the van, with our designated driver staggering into the driver’s seat.
We set off out of Settle still high on the euphoria of our fight with the banjo-playing locals and our escape from the police. It was about a mile out of Settle, pitch black with no landmarks or anything, when two of the lads shouted to stop the van. They jumped out saying they thought the police would be getting reinforcements and would be on their way to arrest us. They were going to walk over the fields, staying off the roads and would see us back at the pub… if we made it. Well five minutes later we made it back to the pub and settled down for the night.
It was maybe two hours later when we were woken by some shouting and moaning. It was the two lads who’d taken the ‘safe’ rambling option. They came into the car park, battered and bruised, with cuts and blood everywhere. Our initial thoughts were they had been beaten up by revenge seeking locals, but this wasn’t the case. When we left them they decided to jump over a wall and walk over the fields to the pub, they said you could just make it out through some trees, but it was pitch black, so when they jumped over the wall they never saw the 20ft drop on other side. Ouch! They landed in some bushes which broke their fall – but they were bramble and thorn bushes.
In the morning, despite our injuries from the fight, the award for most sorry looking faces went to the two ramblers. Their cuts were quite nasty, bruises to most parts of the body, their clothes were ripped, torn and covered in blood… they had also managed to find some lovely cow pats which they had walked through, which had stuck to their trousers and managed to get into their sleeping bags.
We then carried on with our adventure to the Keswick rally… which is a tale I’ll save for another day!
A little after-note. One of the lads had got friendly with one of the local girls and went back two weeks later to see her. He took her for a drink into town and he got beaten up by the locals who remembered him from the previous ‘nightclub incident’. Oh how we laughed when he came back from his date and explained his black eye. Good times though.