A barn full of bikes!

Most people secretly hope for a ‘barn find’ – but what if you get more than you bargained for, and ‘find’ hundreds of scooters?

It was normal to hear of someone buying an old scooter locked away in a garage for years and costing only a few pounds. I always wished that one day it could be my turn and that the same would happen to me. Eventually it did happen but it wasn’t just one scooter but instead... more than a hundred of them!

It was a Wednesday afternoon (half day at work) when my mate Dave came belting round to my house armed with a copy of

Motorcycle News and waving it around furiously. He excitedly told me: “There a bloke advertising a load of scooters for sale and we can have them for fifty quid each if we want!”

I was trying to calm him down as he was so excited he could hardly catch his breath. He went on to explain they were situated on a farm around 50 miles away and that if we were interested we could have them all. It sounded way too good to be true and surely there must be some sort of catch and sure enough, there was. It transpired he was some type of number plate dealer and bought old vintage motorcycles and scooters purely so that he could acquire their old-style number plates. The law at the time stated that the number couldn’t be transferred unless the original machine was running or something like that. Once the number plate was sold the vehicle was a hindrance to him and in the way…

That was of little consequence to us – we just wanted the scooters. This could be the perfect solution with one person pretty desperate to get rid of them and the other desperate to buy them. So we rang him on this rather odd sort of number that didn’t seem to have an area code, apparently, he had a ‘mobile phone’ whatever that was. We were told to be at Blackshaw Farm by 4pm armed with money and a van.

The money situation was just about doable but the van was a bit of a problem. My dad had an open-back Rascal van the same one as on the puppet show on television but without the enclosed back. We had nicknamed it the ‘Sooty van’ and, equipped with enough rope to scale Mount Everest, set off in search of our treasure.

We were greeted at the farm by a tall thin looking man wearing glasses by the name of Roger. He was constantly running round dashing from one outbuilding to the other and almost unable to stand still. From now on he would be known to us as Roger the Dodger and his continued erratic behaviour made sure he lived up to the name we had given him. Finally, he opened two huge doors on an old barn to reveal literally hundreds of old motorcycles. Scattered randomly in

Our eyes were popping out, we had never seen so many in one go. Just as we were recovering, Roger said: “Do you want to see the other barns too?”

between were dozens of various Vespa and Lambretta scooters. Our eyes were popping out, we had never seen so many in one go. Just as we were recovering, Roger calmly said: “Do you want to see the other barns to?” There were more! Surely this couldn’t be true? But it was. He had been in this business for years and had built up a huge stock.

Explaining that we were first to answer his advert he said we could have them all but they would only become available when the plate had been sold, referring back to this odd law the DVLA had conjured up. The other condition he stipulated was once the plate was sold you must take the scooter immediately as space was a premium to him. The deal was done at £50 a machine and we were only to have the scooters whatever make they were. “No problem to us, let us know when you’re ready,” and here was the catch. “Well, there are these eight to be getting on with, so that’s £400 please.” Both Dave and I gulped in unison and, trying to look cool, handed over what to us was a huge amount of money at the time. Roger duly took the money and said he would be in touch when more became available. He was a businessman on the go and with brick-style, mobile phone in one hand shook ours with the other and disappeared.

Now, what were we going to do? Eight scooters to move in a tiny van and a 100-mile round trip each time? Somehow we managed to cram three on at once, overhanging on the sides and semisecured by the miles of rope we wrapped around them. Three journeys later and miraculously not once stopped by the police for dangerously overloading, we had finally got these eight back to ours.

The next problem was where to put them all as eight old scooters take up a fair bit of room. Temporarily they were put around the back of the house much to the annoyance of my father who was unhappy about the oil trail on his patio slabs.

We had rushed out an ad on the local paper as Thursday night was vehicle night. Again my father was further annoyed as most of the evening the house phone almost rang itself to pieces. Who cared? As quickly as we had shipped the scooters in they were going out sold the next day.

The following week Roger was on the phone again but this time we were armed with a bigger van ready to take all he had to offer. Like all things, it finally came to an end when the number plate laws changed, as did the rising cost of scooters; Roger’s supply eventually drying up. Neither of us though will forget the day those doors opened up though to reveal a barn full of bikes, oh… and scooters.