THE WIDOW of 46-year-old Newtyle man Davie Hepburn, who died last Friday when his motorcycle was involved in a collision with a car near Blairgowrie, has issued an open invitation to the motorcycling community to attend his funeral in Dundee on Saturday.

Mrs Kim Hepburn, who had been married for 10 years and had been his partner for more than 20, shared her husband’s passion for motorcycles. She said, “I’m absolutely sure he would have wanted as many of his biking mates as possible to come along and say their farewells and, having enjoyed so many happy times on the road with him and his friends, I think it’s only right that they should be there to see him off as well.”

The couple met when he was working in her home town of Bournemouth, and they moved to Scotland when he found work as a gamekeeper.

Mrs Hepburn said, “It was what he had wanted to do since he was a child and we were lucky enough to live in the some of the most beautiful parts of the country—including the Black Isle, Sutherland and Rannoch Moor—as he followed his career as a gamekeeper and deer stalker.

“He was eventually made redundant but then got what he described as a job in a million working as a chauffeur for Sir James Cayzer, who he got on very well with, and we moved to Newtyle.

“Apart from his work, his life really revolved around his bikes—if he wasn’t working on bikes or riding them he was on the computer talking to other bikers.

“Last year we went touring in Belgium on his Triumph Trophy, and when he phoned me during a stop on the run on Friday he said he was going to do some work on the Trophy when he got home so we could go out on it on Saturday.

“It was just such a terrible shock when I was told he had died, but at least it happened when he was doing something he enjoyed and I can take some small comfort from the fact that the police told me he wouldn’t have felt a thing.

“The funeral will be very tough, but my sister has come up to stay with me for a while and, with the generous offers of support from his many, many biking friends—some of whom are coming from as far afield as London and even Norway—we will give Davie the send-off he deserves.”

Davie was an active member of the on-line Dundee Bikers Forum, whose founder Stuart McIntosh said, “I hadn’t known him all that very long, but in that short time he had become one of my closest biking friends—it felt like I’d known him for years.”The funeral will be at Dundee Crematorium at 11 am on Saturday and any motorcyclists who want to join the cortege are asked to assemble at the Templeton Woods lay-by, on the A923 Dundee-Coupar Angus road, from 10 am.