The Pilgrims Scooter Club was essentially born around about the year 2000 when a group of lads, including Chris Cherry, Paul Redfern and Mark Shirley, (to name but a few) would just meet up in the middle of Bedford town centre for a chat about all things scootering and enjoy a coffee at The Piazza. Click here for gallery of Piazza pictures.
This soon grew following intervention from Wendy “Innocenti” who saw Chris after just leaving the Piazza on his scooter. She chased him, something I’m assured is not her usual behaviour with men, and informed him that there was also some resurgence in the scene in Mid Bedfordshire. Namely, Bedfordshire Scooter Scene that was to meet at The Engineer’s Arms in Henlow on the second Thursday of each month.
As word of both these meets spread, the ones at Henlow were starting to outgrow the venue and scooters were becoming a more and more common sight in Bedford on a Sunday morning.
By summer of 2001 the meets in Bedford were so well established there were rumblings about calling ourselves something but no-one could really think of anything appropriate and people were just enjoying the scooters and all that went with it.
By the following year, as numbers continued increasing there were more murmurs of wanting some sort of “identity” but none was forthcoming and then by the end of 2002 / beginning of 2003 something happened to focus our minds.
Yep, the Henlow meet for the BSS was too small as the season started to pick up again. Literally, there is only enough room for about 10 to 12 scooters off road.
It was as the season was starting to kick off that Squirrel came up with a name: The Pilgrims. It certainly seemed to fit, what with John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress and the connections to Bedford and it stuck. In short shrift afterwards we decided to move the monthly meet to another pub up the road in Henlow where we have met ever since, on the second Thursday of the month.