Spirit of Munro brings Scot across the world

MICHAEL FALLOW

Gary Hendry has swanned down from Scotland for the Burt Munro rally and is slightly taken aback that anyone hereabouts would care. It's not as if he's a fanatical biker.

The 48-year-old from Comrie, in Perthshire, sold his furniture business a while back and has resisted the thought of retirement.

"It's very easy, when you're nearly 50, to say, well, better get the slippers looked at."

Instead he's recalibrating his life, a process that of late has included a six-month Australian outback trip with wife Jenni and children Jack and Kate in a four-wheel-drive with kayak and mountainbikes strapped on.

Then there was that 4WD trip around the Atlas mountains of Morocco.

His granddad packed up his family for a fairly intrepid exploration of the United States with his family back in the 1930s "so there's a bit of a genetic disorder there."

Although he has owned motorcycles, and was idly looking through motorbiking options when he clicked on to the Munro rally ("it was one of those link-from-a-link-from-a-link things"), his insistence that it's not actually the bikes that attracted him to Invercargill is backed up by the fact that he hasn't brought one.

He's here purely as a spectator. Yesterday afternoon he was still not quite sure, off the top of his head, what the rally entails.

"What's great is that I know nothing about this, except that it sounds good fun. It'll be all surprises to me.

"I don't know what's going on tonight, tomorrow or the next day – haven't a clue."

So what was the attraction, exactly?

"Getting away from the British Government, for starters," the Scot says, smiling.

("He doesn't mean the justice system," his Tauranga-based brother Doug helpfully chimes in, as he arrives into the conversation.)

Thinking some more, Gary Hendry decides it's the maverick feel of the rally that mattered to him.

When he happened upon the website, the memory it stirred was of Roger Donaldson's movie The World's Fastest Indian. He remembered being impressed more by the man's spirit than anything else.

Reminded of the Oreti Beach sprints, Mr Hendry becomes animated.

"See – that would never, ever happen in the UK. Bikes racing on a beach? You'd never get consent."

We would do ourselves a great favour, he suggests, if we don't do as Britain is doing and follow the United States model, where life is lived under the oppressive fear of lawsuits.

For his part, Gary Hendry plans to have a damned good time while he's here. And when he's back home with the family, well, he just might start looking more seriously into a wee cycle trip. Lands End to John O'Groats sounds good.

- © Fairfax NZ News