A team of 'scooterists' are taking part in a 2,500-mile trip around the UK, stopping off in Exmouth and Weston-super-Mare in August.

They are doing the trip on 60-plus-year-old Italian scooters raising funds for the Alzheimer’s Society. 

This small team, Alison Bowen, David Henry Smith, Dave Harrison and Alex Bateman will start at about 6.30am on August 14, from Brighton. From there, travel anti-clockwise around the country visiting the 28 towns that hosted National Scooter Rallies in the 1980s. 

They plan to be in Weston-super-Mare on day eight of the leg, August 21 and Exmouth on August 22.

They chose the Alzheimer's Society because Henry’s mum Joan battled Alzheimer’s before passing away in 2021. 2024 is the 40th anniversary of Henry buying his first Lambretta, there really is no better time for us to take this trip.

In addition to any funds we collect on the road, they have also held a series of pre-tour activities. The original target was £5,000 but they exceeded that.

The team are self-funding the tour, you can donate via the JustGiving page: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/GrassSkirtsTour.

Organiser Alison Bowen said: "We are just about ready to embark on the adventure. Packing up our gear, strapping it to scooters and riding to a scooter rally; we just happen to be taking the long way round this time.  We are calling our trip the ‘Before We Forget’ tour as we want to meet new people and reunite with old friends around the country, not just for sponsorships or donations, but to get together, possibly even to ride together, and to remember the good (and bad) old days Before We Forget! 

"We are all in our 50’s and we have all been riding scooters and attending rallies since the 80’s. We are riding vehicles that are older than us and keeping them on the road for normal usage is a challenge in itself - a challenge that multiplies exponentially for using them to travel 2500 miles over 10 days. All of which means we will be taking spares, and spares of spares and possibly even spares of spares of spares."

For more information visit their website www.beforeweforget.uk