BURT MUNRO CHALLENGE
IF YOU’VE PREVIOUSLY been to or followed the Burt Munro Challenge in Invercargill, NZ, you will have seen wet races – very wet races! Even ducks don’t like that much rain. So the organisers of the Burt Munro Challenge made the brave decision to change the date from the usual rainy November, to a more predictable (and hopefully drier) February, and it paid off big time!
Thanks to Venture Southland tourism I headed over to Queenstown, picked up one of the beautifully presented bikes from Paradise Motorcycle Tours base (only a couple of minutes from the airport) and set off to Invercargill, which is only a couple of hours away. The next morning was the first event at Bluff – the hill climb – and I wanted to be there for that.
All vintages of bikes were on hand for the various races. To give you a rundown of what was there, they are as follows –
AHRMA Class C (very old!)
Classic Pre ’63
Post Classic Pre ’82
Post Classic Pre ’89
UpTo 600cc (mostly supermotards)
601cc to Open (mostly modern sportsbikes)
ATV Quad
CLASSIC MOTORCYCLE MECCA NZ HILL CLIMB CHAMPS
It was a 20-minute ride to the normally sleepy town of Bluff, which was being livened right up by the hill climb races. Thousands (and I do mean thousands) of motorcycles lined the streets and even peoples’ front yards
