I spent last summer in Italy with a fading local beauty. We met on the
internet and enjoyed a magical three months together, picnicking beside
fields of sunflowers, wandering through medieval hilltop towns and listening
to old Dean Martin records.
In the Sixties she’d been the epitome of glamour and she showed me a side of
her country I would otherwise never have seen. Her name was Sophia and I
fell in love with her. Only one thing stood in our way. Sophia was a motor
scooter. A 1961-model Vespa, to be precise.
The idea to ride around Italy on a Vespa first came to me as a teenager
growing up in Sydney. Sydney was not the lively, cosmopolitan city back then
that it is today. Dinner was meat and two veg and Sunday-afternoon
television consisted of Abbott and Costello reruns. Occasionally they would
show an old black-and-white Italian movie and Mum would make lasagne.
On those days I’d get a glimpse of another world on our flickering Grundig. A
place where all a guy had to do to look cool was jump on a Vespa and buzz
down to a café, a beach or glamorous nightclub where a clutch of glamorous
women with big, pointy and slightly dangerous-looking breasts would flirt
with him.
Over the years movies such as La Dolce Vita, Roman Holiday and
more recently, The Talented Mr Ripley all embroidered my dream of
going to Italy and buy a Vespa. To ride around the countryside drinking
espresso and flirting with women with curvaceous figures and dark, burning
eyes. To live the dolce vita, the sweet life, like Marcello
Mastroianni, in a sharp suit and Ray-Bans. In the summer I turned 40 I
decided to make it a reality.
I was very particular about the kind of Vespa I wanted. It had to be as old as
me and in roughly the same condition — a little rough around the edges but
going OK. It had to have saddle seats and a little too much chrome. And it
couldn’t be too sparkly. I wanted a Vespa that had been allowed to age
gracefully, not tarted up with a shoddy spray job and a lick of tyre black.
I found it one night on Italian eBay.
Of course my dream could have ended in tears there and then. Italians are the
kind of people who spend their days making love and dreaming up new ways to
avoid tax, not the type you’d send money to over the internet for a motor
scooter that may not even exist.
But I hadn’t counted on that special place Vespas have in Italian hearts.
Gianni, the guy I bought the bike from, loved the idea that I was coming all
the way from Australia to ride his scooter in Italy and went out of his way
to help me. I didn’t have to pay him until I got to Milan. He let me keep
her registered in his name for the summer. And he bought me a lunch over
which he explained how things really work in Italy: “There is the law, and
there is intelligence.”
In a nutshell, those simple, elegant lines of a Vespa are part of Italy’s DNA.
For older generations it was the cheap family vehicle that helped to get
Italy back on its feet after the Second World War. To teenagers in the 1960s
and 1970s it was a stylish ticket to freedom. Even today, the release of a
new model gets people from all walks of life arguing whether it has retained
the Vespa spirit.
Everyone I met in Italy had a Vespa story. Mine, for example, had been bought
by a man especially to woo a girl; all the accessories were meant to impress
upon the girl’s father that he was a man of means. Another guy told me about
his family’s Vespa, how they would all pile on to it every Sunday and go to
the local village. There they had to choose between buying a pizza and
buying petrol. If they chose a pizza, Dad had to push the bike home.
My journey was also helped by the Italian Government’s policy of rotamazione
— in order to meet EU emission levels the government pays people €1,000
(£670) to crush their old bikes, leaving very few on the road. So mechanics
fixed my Vespa for nothing, happy to keep a little piece of Italian heritage
going. Hotel managers gave me their best rooms at discount rates. Farmers
tilling fields looked up to watch me pass. I lost count of the number of
times riders on other scooters rode beside me smiling broadly and asking me
questions in Italian.
I had no idea what they were saying and simply answered “quarrenti anni”,
40 years, hoping they were asking how old it was. It seemed to satisfy them,
but then they could have well been asking, “When was the last time you rode
a bike, buddy?” I’m convinced that there is no better way to see Italy than
on a Vespa.
I could feel the sun on my skin and smell the freshly cut hay. I was forced to
travel on minor roads, past stone villas and fields of sunflowers. I could
ignore traffic restrictions and ride through ancient towns, and in the case
of Siena, right up to Il Campo. The hook under the front of the seat was the
perfect place for the breads, cheeses, hams and tomatoes that I bought fresh
from markets each morning.
And when I finally got to Rome and my girlfriend joined me for the weekend, we
had a fantastic time pretending we were in Roman Holiday. (Sally made
a good Audrey Hepburn. I was a decidedly low-rent Gregory Peck.) We scooted
up cobbled streets past the Colosseum, right up to the Pantheon and to the
tiny cafés and restaurants of Trastevere, ignoring police who tweeted at us
with whistles.
Riding a vintage Vespa in Italy was an impossibly romantic way to see this
impossibly romantic country. And it should not be taken lightly. London
traffic wardens have not taken kindly to the way I have started parking on
pavements. And within six months of our weekend in Rome, Sally and I were
married.
Vroom with a View by Peter Moore is published this week (Bantam Press,
£10.99). You can view pictures from his trip at www.petermoore.net
SCOOT AROUND A QUIRK OF ITALIAN LAW
Buying a vintage Vespa
Italian law forbids foreigners from owning vintage Vespas — classed as
anything but brand new. So leave the bike registered in the previous owner’s
name: make sure he is willing to do this before you pay. A vintage Vespa
costs anything from £675; Sophia cost £810. You will find bikes on
www.ebay.it and www.wasps.it. Budget for repairs and join the ACI
(www.aci.it), the equivalent of the AA, which costs £34 a year. ACI can also
help with insurance; the bike will have to be insured in the previous
owner’s name, but you will be covered — about £50 for three months. A
motorcycle licence is required, and if you want to keep the bike after the
trip, make sure the owner cancels his registration and surrenders the bike
plates to you, as the DVLC will want proof that the bike is yours when you
register it in the UK.
Buying a new Vespa outside Italy
EU citizens can purchase new Vespas and register them for a short period using
escursionisti esteri (foreign travellers) number plates. See www.vespa.com
for details.
Hiring a Vespa
Italian entrepreneurs have cottoned on to the appeal of riding a Vespa. You
can hire one in most big tourist centres. Watch out for flyers with the
inevitable Audrey Hepburn picture.
Vespa tours
USA-based Italy by Vespa (001 303 669 5237, www.italybyvespa.com ) offers a
seven-day tour through Tuscany on Vespas, staying in palaces and villas and
eating in gourmet restaurants. It costs from £2,565pp and includes vineyard
tours, cooking and pottery lessons, but sadly not the shiny red Vespa at the
end of it, or flights.
