Ducati Owners' Club Meeting

Like migrant geese returning to their summer abode, as the first feeble rays of Spring sunshine bathe the Park, the motorcyclists are returning. This year, the first flock of note was the Scottish Ducati Club, which held its inaugural meeting of the year at the Inn in Strathyre on 7 March, with Jill and Stephen Nixon providing a gastropub quality lunch to feed the assembled masses.

This was a gathering of a rare species – Ducatis are Italian, more often than not with eyeball-searingly red plumage and are generally regarded as the two-wheeled equivalent of Ferraris. As such, they tend to be owned by enthusiasts, in whom they inspire a level of devotion that is quite capable of leading to psychiatry, bankruptcy or both. In fact, exactly the qualities required to drive more than thirty of them to ride through the melting snow and chill air out of sheer optimism for the coming year.

Richard Harris