Busy Ben’s Essex scooter collective

Ben Tushaw has packed a lot into 15 years on the scootering scene.

As well as riding to rallies all over the country, he’s suffered multiple broken bones, set up an Essex-wide scooter collective, and helped raise thousands for a children’s cancer charity.

Birth of Essex Scooterists

It was while recovering from the first of two scooter-related broken legs a decade ago that he came up with the idea for Essex Scooterists.

“I was sitting there, bored, and I got thinking about when I went on ride outs you’d meet other clubs and they’d say ‘we had a do the other day, you should have come’,” he says.

“I hadn’t known anything about it, so I started Essex Scooterists (ES) on Facebook so that all the clubs in the county could put stuff on there and get together.

“It’s like an umbrella organisation for all the clubs in Essex, a collective of everyone. Then someone said to me ‘do you do hoodies and t-shirts?’ So I got in touch with someone and I saw more people when I broke my leg than ever, with everyone coming round getting hoodies and t-shirts.”

About three years ago, Ben, 33, thought he could do more with ES than a Facebook group where people posted bits for sale and events.

Week-night ride outs

“So I started doing week-night ride outs,” he says, chatting in his lock up in Southend, and nursing another broken leg. “In the summer, there are a lot of rallies, so there’s no point in me doing anything on a weekend.

Ben (with horns) on a ride out

“I organised some ride outs where a different club would host us each week. For example, the Southend Classic Scooter Club meets at the Peterboat in Leigh-on-Sea every Wednesday night, and then we might be at North Essex with the 3 Amigos Scooter Club at the Bungalow Diner in Marks Tey. So everyone from Essex gets either a short ride or a really long ride on a weeknight…

“The first one was down at Leigh and we got about 30 people, then it was 60, then 90, and at the fourth meet on a really warm evening in Brentwood we had 140 scooters turn on a Wednesday night, which was mental.”

Things progressed again when Ben had the idea of raising money for the Lennox Children’s Cancer Fund, an Essex-based charity that supports the families of children with cancer.

With help from his uncle, Dean, and friend Mark, Ben organised a ride out in 2022 from Basildon to Rainham, in 2023 from Wickford to Bicknacre, and on September 29 this year from the White Horse at Brentwood to the Gardeners at Chelmsford.

Ben with Mark and his uncle Dean (right)

“We have a band, DJs, a massive raffle, goody bags, and 15 trophies, and it’s just a good day,” says Ben, with £7,000 raised so far to help pay for families to have holidays in chalets in Suffolk and Kent.

Uncle Dean to blame

Uncle Dean, who has given Ben a lift to the lock-up where his scooters are kept while he recovers from his latest broken leg, is largely responsible for his nephew’s devotion to scooters.

“There’s a picture of me with Dean holding me on his T5,” says Ben. “I’ve grown up with it really, because of him. He’s why I’ve always been a scooterist.”

Dean with a very young Ben

“When he was little, about six or seven, he said to me he was going to get a Harley-Davidson, and I said ‘no you’re not, if you’re going to be on two wheels you’re going to get a scooter’,” says Dean, a veteran of the ‘80s scooter scene.

After going to Nottingham for college, Ben got his first scooter on returning home to Essex at 18, a “really crappy little Vespa ET4”.

“I was in a car with my mate when he had an accident, which wasn’t his fault, so I put in a whiplash claim and got about £500,” he says, “With that I bought this Vespa 125 off a Brazilian woman in London. It was a right heap, but I loved it because it was my first little scooter.

Ben’s current scooters

“At the time, I was one of the only young ones for years, hanging around with the older guys on my own, but now there are a few more young ones coming into it.

“I used the ET4 for commuting, and for ride outs with the Southend Classic club – whether it was wet or windy we’d go for breakfast every Sunday.

“I didn’t have a lot of money, but I’d always do Mersea Island, and Camber Sands, which was a good one. I did a lot of them with Dean.”

Camber Sands weekenders

Ben remembers riding to Pontins at Camber Sands in November 2012 with a mate, and Dean – who had just bought a new PX – said he’d ride with them part of the way and then go home.

“I’m looking in my mirror and thinking ‘Dean’s still with us’,” he says. “He’s got no clothes with him, he literally rolled out of bed, put on tracksuit bottoms, a hoody and a flight jacket, and rode with us. We got to this petrol station somewhere in Kent and he said ‘do you think they’d mind if I came with you?’

“So Dean spent all weekend in boots and jogging bottoms.”

The little ET4 died after about six months, when Ben’s grandad helped him buy a brand new Vespa LX automatic.

“I had that for years and loved that little scooter,” he says. “I had a little front rack on it with a big yellow spotlight in the middle and two little white lights either side – terrible really!”

Vespa LX in the snow

After passing his test, Ben progressed to a Vespa 300 GTS, on which he has travelled all over the country, until one fateful return trip from a rally at Whitby in North Yorkshire earlier in 2024.

“I’d popped in to see my auntie on the way home, and it was 6pm when I got to Blyth Services and I was feeling tired,” he remembers.

“I filled up, had a Chinese in the services and thought ‘I’m not going anywhere, I’m just going to chill out’, so I booked into the hotel there.

Chained and locked

“I found this really sturdy gate and put my scooter there, alarmed it, chained it, disc lock, grip lock, and came out in the morning – no scooter and grind marks all over the floor.

Ben (left) on the GTS

“What more could you do?”

But the thieves hadn’t reckoned on the power of social media and the Essex Scooterists community.

“With a lot of Facebooking and Instagramming, someone found it for sale at a farm in Luton,” says Ben.

“We managed to pinpoint where the farm was using the numbers on the shipping containers you could see in the video. We told the police but they weren’t particularly interested.

“So my mate, a fellow Essex Alliance scooter club member, called the police and said ‘if you don’t go and get it, we will’, so then the police went and got it.”

Stripped of goodies

Unfortunately, the thieves had stripped the bike of a lot of Ben’s accessories, which included an Akrapovič exhaust, upgraded 12-inch wheels, front and rear rack, back rest, and after-market seat.

“They’ve replaced it all with other bits and it’s rideable,” he says, “but I’m in two minds whether to get rid of it because it’s not really mine anymore really, or to make it mine again and keep it. But it feels a bit tainted.”

Ben bought the Royal Alloy you see in these pictures as a replacement for the GTS, which remains with the police while he recovers from his broken leg.

“The first rally we did on it was Skegness, and it rained the whole way,” he says. “There’s a massive sports bike shop in Boston, and we walked in there at 5pm to buy waterproofs and gloves, even though we already had some on. We were drenched – every time I walked I had water leaking out of my boots.”

Mark, pictured here on his Scomadi, adds: “This weather front followed us from our house to the rally. We got there at 7pm and it stopped raining at 8pm.”

The pair were sopping wet when they arrived at their Airbnb in the Lincolnshire seaside town.

“I felt so bad, because the woman had just bought it and done it up, we were hanging stuff up everywhere with muddy water running off,” says Ben. “I was like ‘oh my God’, but we did tidy up.”

“The scooter scene used to get a bad reputation for everyone trashing everything, but it’s not like that now,” adds Mark. “We have a laugh, but we clean up after ourselves.”

Spanish Lambretta

The other scooter pictured with Ben is a 1960 Spanish Lambretta Li150 Series 2, bought about two years ago – his first geared scooter.

“We had to strip it down and respray it, but the previous owner hadn’t used two-pack paint,” he says. “ I got some petrol down it and it just melted. We had to rewire it as well, because whatever he’d done with the wiring was atrocious.

“I haven’t been that far on it yet because on the way to the Great Yarmouth scooter rally last year my reg rec set alight after about 10 miles,” he says, showing me the ruined unit. “I pulled out all the wiring, kicked it over, got no lights, no speedo, but it ran so I got it back home, pulled out my Vespa and ripped it up the A12.

“I got to Acle and the heavens opened, with water lapping over the footboards. I only arrived at Yarmouth 10 minutes after the others, but they didn’t get any rain.”

It was a victory for the modern four-stroke Vespa over the six decades old Lambretta, and both Ben and Dean – despite his personal dislike of the new breed of autos – feel they have a place in the scene.

“I went to Brighton Mod rally at the weekend and there were loads and loads of Royal Alloys there, as many as there were classic Lambrettas,” says Dean. “I think it’s to do with our generation, the mod revival generation, getting older. With these small engines, you’re on the gears all the time, and you get older and you haven’t got that dexterity any more.”

Modern scooters have a place

“Also, some people aren’t mechanically minded, and these old scooters break down,” adds Ben. “Not everyone can go ‘that’s wrong, I’ll fix it at the side of the road’. The modern scooters aren’t accepted by all, but on the whole I think they are, and they’ve got a place.”

Ben is still wearing ankle and knee supports following his accident on a roundabout in Rochford, and it will be a while yet before he is able to ride any distance.

It happened when he was riding home from his work as a CNC machinist near Southend Airport.

“They’ve painted the roundabout red to stop boy racers using the road like a racetrack,” he says. “It was raining and I didn’t know it was going to be that slippery. I wasn’t going that fast but both wheels went and my scooter landed on my leg, snapping my tibia and fibula.

“They’ve taken my fibula out because it was annihilated, and I’ve got a tibia nail that runs from my ankle to my knee hammered in, with two pins either side.

“I’m putting in a claim because it’s ridiculous, it’s too slippery. But the first time I broke my leg, when a kid ran out in front of me, the first thing I did was ride over the spot where I had the accident because I wanted no fear. I don’t want any hesitation or fear in my riding, so I’ll be going back over the roundabout – in the dry.”

Scooters till I die

With Essex Scooterists going from strength to strength, and Ben committed to raising more funds for charity, he says he will be involved in the scene until the day he dies.

“I love the community of it,” he explains. “It’s like a family, and in my club the Essex Alliance, we’re so close and we all look after each other.

“For example, Mark’s my best friend from school, and he wasn’t a scooterist. He’s also my barber, and about three years ago he was cutting my hair and he said ‘I’m getting a bit low, I’m bored, I’ve got nothing to do’, so I said ‘get a scooter’. He’s never looked back and he goes all over the country with us.”

As a motto, ‘get a scooter’ isn’t a bad one…

Scooter stories is a series of articles exploring the lives and experiences of scooterists and collectors. Click on the Scooter Stories category link to read more.