Vroom with a view

A Vespa-riding Brendan Boyle enjoys the bends on a special tour of Tuscany

It  began over a bottle of wine after work one day late last year. The political scene was as dismal as the weather. By the time the pizza platters had been cleared and the second bottle flattened, we knew that what we really needed to do was explore Tuscany on genuine Vespa scooters.

And so in July, by arrangement with the makers and with the temperature in the upper 30s, my 18-year-old son Jed and I, with my colleague Wyndham and his wife Lizet, got off the train in Pontedera, where Piaggio has produced cars planes, trains and bikes since 1924.

The factory produced a million Vespas in the first 10 years after the end of WW2, some of which are in the factory's museum. Now it produces a quarter of a million a year from this plant, with others sold under the Piaggio brand from factories in China and Vietnam.

The ride to our first stop at Montecatini Val di Cecina would be a cinch, we were assured as we familiarised ourselves with the sparkling Vespas we had been loaned. But having plunged into the afternoon traffic and ridden for 45 minutes, which included an unintended and terrifying highway experience, we found ourselves back in Pontedera with 24km on the clock and 49 still to go.

We managed to find our farmhouse a few hours later at the top of a dizzying mountain climb, having stopped off in a tiny village for wine, tomatoes, mozzarella, bread and some unidentifiable meats with a lot of garlic.

Tuscany has many fortress towns more famous than Montecatini Val di Cecina, but we soon learnt that the best experiences were off the tourist map.

There are no souvenir shops in these towns, but there is always a grocer with a spectacular range of cured meats, usually a baker and always a trattoria. A small market comes to most of them once a week.

The locals come out late onto the town square by South African standards, filling the terraces while children race about and old men gather to talk.

The two 125cc Vespas coped almost as well as the bigger, water-cooled 300cc touring scooters with the long, steep and twisting roads. Climbing steadily for up to an hour at speeds seldom above 30km/h and in temperatures that seemed high enough to peel paint, the smaller engines kept their cool.

The tourist maps for every town will guide you to the piazza and the main church and that is where you will find the crowds. But you never need to stray far from the beaten track to find people living ordinary lives, doing the washing, enjoying little gardens, working on old cars in cramped garages or just sitting on the doorstep.

The secondary P52 on the way to San Gimignano made for a glorious ride, ranging from bleached stubble with rolls of hay to lush green vineyards and, before sunset, spectacular fields of sunflowers.

This walled city, called the Manhattan of Italy because of its many towers, is among the best known in Tuscany. The towers sprouted in the 13th century as command centres for each of the rival families' own little army. They are so close together, though, that it is hard to imagine them serving any purpose other than to renew hostilities every morning with a few choice insults shouted from one to the other. Now the tiny spaces at the top serve as miniature sun decks.

As everywhere in tourist-filled Italy, it paid in San Gimignano to be first out on the Piazza della Cisterna, where the first coffee shop opens at 7am. You can take your coffee to the steps of the well dug in 1237 in the centre of the square.

The more popular towns are closed to non-resident vehicles, but if you are on two wheels, hotels can usually show you a back way in and a place to park.

After several days up and down the roads of rural Tuscany, we were ready for a culture break in Florence, where the daytime hours are for the renowned sights, but the evenings and nights are for enjoying the city and its people.

Crossing to the north bank of the Arno over the Vittoria bridge one evening, we dived into a maze of one-ways that switched direction every block to discourage through traffic. Getting out of there was like solving the Rubik's cube. By the time we made it back to our hotel, we had passed stately apartment blocks, seen an African neighbourhood, jazz venues spilling onto the pavement and what the guide books call the Bohemian district.

A missed turn on another evening put us on a steep , winding road to Piazzale Michelangelo and what we came to call the Babel stairs. Here we joined a mainly young crowd just in time to hear the bells chiming 9pm in the city far below.

Hundreds of people had settled on a broad flight of stairs with picnics and wine. Their excited chatter faded to a murmur as the city turned dark and a full moon rose behind us to turn the Arno gold.

Navigation is as quirky as anything else in Italy. It is complex but has its own logic and it gets easier as you learn the rules. Sunday's ride from Florence to our riverside digs in Bagni di Lucca was such a learning experience. Looking for a more rustic route than the busy S66, we ended up on a twisting track wide enough only for one car at a time. It snaked unfenced through fields of wild flowers, corn, lavender and lucerne.

Every day of our two-week Vespa adventure seemed better than the last. Just one example of the finds we made was Tereglio, an impossibly beautiful town facing down its 12th century rivals on each of the surrounding summits. It had nothing for the tourist, but the dark interior of a general dealer offered enough to make up a picnic to eat on a wall overlooking the valley.

We set off each day with a plan, but somehow the maps never quite matched the roads and we spent many hours lost. Whenever we were able to work out from the intersections of tiny village roads where we were, we'd rework the plan, but something would soon go wrong.

One plan put us on a road the map promised would take us over the crest of a mountain at Stazzema and west towards the sea. The road reduced to the width of a small car, but that was not new, so we pressed on, climbing through forests, rich green glades and along the edge of mountains until we had to concede that the map was wrong - or we were not on the road we thought.

Above the tree line, the road ran out in front of what must have been the highest farmhouse in Tuscany - with a bus stop in front of it.

Our next attempt to head west took us through Focchia, a handful of houses, a church and, impossibly, a restaurant. Focchia has 22 residents. Three were having lunch in the restaurant and three were running it, which accounted for more than a quarter of the population. Lunch, simple but excellent, came with rich pâtés, superb prosciutto and a flagon of local red wine. With so many passes still to ride, we could only taste the wine.

Perhaps another 100 hairpin bends and a few more false turns got us to the coast much later that day, bringing us to Pisa and the last night of the ride, soaked from the first storm that had caught us out on the road.

We had ridden just 1000km in two weeks, carrying everything we needed strapped across the saddles behind us. We did not take a GPS. We could have used one on days like the last, when the trip from Pisa to Pontedera took three times longer than it should have. But from Florence to Focchia, the best experiences of our VespaVenture came from being lost and delivered by chance to the region's less advertised treasures. - Piaggio kindly loaned test bikes for the tour

If you go

GETTING THERE: Fly to Pisa or Florence via many European capitals - from R6750 on special to R11500.

THE LAW: You can ride a 125cc Vespa with a car driver's licence. You need 150cc to ride the motorways, for which you need a motorcycle licence - but why would you want to?

BOOKING: Several agencies offer guided Vespa tours. Others, including www.mototouring.com, will rent a 125cc Vespa for from à60 per day to à472 for two weeks. Some - but not all - have a minimum age of 23.

SKILLS: Respect the traffic but don't fear it. You'll be fine if you don't get too tired. 100km per day is reasonable, 160km per day is hard.

ACCOMMODATION: Hotels and B&Bs all have internet access so book a day ahead as you go on www.venere.com, www.booking.com or www.tripadvisor.com. B&B for two sharing is around à65-120 per night.