A leisurely social run through the countryside of Warwickshire and North Oxfordshire, over roads similar to those used for The Banbury Run – mainly rural lanes, with riding on major roads kept to a minimum. Open to all motorcycles, sidecars and three-wheelers built before 31st December 2001. A perfect test-run for those riding the following day, and an opportunity to join in the occasion for those riding bikes built after 1930. Note that no VMCC breakdown service will be provided for this run.
A choice of routes - around 40 miles aimed at pre-1946 and low-powered machines, or around 75 miles, for the later and faster bikes. The routes run in opposite directions, so those on older or low-powered machines will not be mixing with the newer and faster bikes. “Tulip” route-sheets will be distributed at the start. These will highlight places of interest where riders may wish to stop and explore, along with refreshment opportunities. A Risk Assessment will be prepared for required reading before starting the run.
Camping for the Saturday night can be booked through the museum: see (link awaited).
Entries for the 2026 Banbury Run will open on 1st January: please check back again after then.
Entries and payments must now be made online. There is no paper form, and entry fees can only be paid online by card.
A representative of any One-Make Club or VMCC Section wishing to enter a Team is asked to contact the Secretary of the Meeting at banbury@vmcc.net, before the riders involved make their entries.
If you are new to The Banbury Run, it’s important that you fully read the Regulations before you enter. They contain essential information and explanations about the event, including answers to frequent questions such as why the route cannot be issued in advance.
If you have ridden in The Banbury Run before, it is just as important that you read the Regulations before you enter. Some changes have been made to the format and detail of the event in response to feedback – DO NOT ASSUME everything is the same as it has always been, because it is not. Click here for a summary of the key changes.
What Is The Banbury Run?
The Banbury Run is the world’s premier riding event for Veteran and Vintage motorcycles – bikes made before 1931.
The first Banbury Run was in 1949. The young Vintage Motor Cycle Club (founded in 1946), set out to create a tough competitive test which used some of the routes followed by factory test riders in the early days of the motor industry. From inception, the event was framed as a public showcase for the Club’s activities and bikes.
Over 75 years later, The Banbury Run remains a serious sporting event – a true competition for machines from the early years of motorcycling. It is overseen by the Auto Cycle Union (ACU), the governing body for motorcycle sport in the UK and run to their standards. As a result, “Banbury” is very different to almost all other VMCC events and is more than just a pleasant social run on old bikes through nice countryside. Riders can choose not to bother with riding to time, but in all other respects the rules of an ACU-authorised competitive event apply.
So how does “Banbury” work as a competition? It is not a race: the winner is not the person who completes the distance fastest. It is a ‘regularity run’, where the aim is to ride as close as possible to a set average speed whilst navigating accurately around a route. Any rider who completes the route and who is not more than five minutes early or five minutes late at any of the intermediate time checkpoints (the clock is reset at each checkpoint so you can’t go faster or slower in the next section to cancel out earlier errors) receives a Gold Award. Silver Awards go to riders no more than five minutes early or 15 minutes late at a checkpoint, and Bronze Awards to those no more than five minutes early or 30 minutes late at a checkpoint.
There is of course a bit more to it than that! Most of the machines involved do not have speedometers (which were not required by law until 1936), and for those that do, the mileage counter must be covered up. The rider must use their experience and judgement to work out how far they have travelled and how fast – this takes some serious practice. The average speed goes by the age of the machine – 15mph for the very oldest, up to 30mph for those made between 1925 and 1930. That may seem easy, but that is far from the case whilst coping with country lanes and modern traffic on temperamental old machines. The run is plotted out on the map, checked for safety on the road, and then written down as a “Tulip Route” - a sequence of diagrams of junctions, signposts, etc. Mistakes are too easy, accuracy requires concentration, and the rider does not know in advance where the route goes.
We hope you like the idea of taking part, preferably riding timed, and that we will see you at Gaydon on Sunday 7th June 2026.
Videos of the 2023 Banbury Run by Alex Rollings can be found on the Classic Motorcycle Channel on YouTube.
