SwiftyAir MkII: the Snowdon smashing super scooter of your dreams

That man has taken a wrong turn… and I don’t mean navigationally.

Hey, you need to open up your mind. Let the brisk Welsh air blast through your neural pathways and dislodge some of those prejudices and assumed behaviours. The ones that tell you not to wear shorts to work, or squirt Ribena out of your nose at a funeral, or ride a scooter. And anyway, give the guy a break. He’s just push-shoved a thing with no pedals up one of Britain’s tallest mountains.

You know there’s a train, right?

A train up a mountain? Those Welshies know how it’s done. Anyway, it’ll leave him more beans for having a hoot on the way down. This latest version of the British-designed SwiftyAIR scooter has strong 36-spoke 16in wheels with grippier-than-a-cat-on-a-curtain Maxxis tyres. It’s also got powerful V-type brakes because you don’t always want to go full speed… sometimes you want to go Caerphilly.

Good grief. Is the Swifty really for adults, or is he standing really far away?

Um. He’d still be an adult, wherever he stands. Oh, wait, you mean the Gandalf-Bilbo forced perspective thing. Clever. But, yes, it is for adults. Despite weighing a throw-it-over-your-shoulder 8.5kg, the SwiftyAIR is rated for a maximum weight of 150kg… which is more single-seerving human than we’d like to see a-scootering down the platform towards us.

What’s more, when it arrives in October, it’ll have a decidedly grown-up £449 price tag. Are people really going to go up the hills on one? Doubtful. There’d be a riot of tutting ramblers. But for urban hooning, park blasting and commuting, there are worse-looking ways to unlock your inner youth.