The biggest annual event in the world for vintage motorcycles is without doubt the Banbury Run, which has been organised for the past 75 years by the Vintage Motor Cycle Club. Over the decades the event has welcomed up to 600 riders of pre-1931 machines but entries are now limited to 500 in the interests of the optimum efficiency in terms of administration and logistics.
A question often asked is why the North Oxfordshire town of Banbury, a place with no history of its own in terms of the motorcycle industry, should warrant having its name linked to one of the most famous events in the world of classic motorcycling.
For the answer to that we have to go back to the nineteen-twenties and ‘thirties when the British motorcycle industry was arguably at its most successful. In those days there were a large number of manufacturers located within a 30-mile arc across the West Midlands from Redditch in Worcestershire in the west through its epicentre in Birmingham and its environs and then eastwards to Coventry.
All of those manufacturers needed to test their new models before they went on sale to the general public and at that point in time motorcycle technology had progressed to the point where a short run in the areas local to the factories was not enough. More challenging tests routes of up to 100-mile round-trips were needed and those journeys needed to include some hilly terrain that would truly test a motorcycle’s capabilities.
As it happened, the market town of Banbury was within 50 miles of all of the Midlands manufacturers and, most importantly, it is situated just a few miles to the east of the great limestone escarpment that runs diagonally across England from the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire and northeast to the Lincolnshire Wolds. Between the factories of the Midlands and Banbury, the steep western edge of that formidable escarpment provided a number of hill climbs that would definitely put the motorcycles of the 1920s to a true test.
Most fearsome of these was Sunrising Hill, which overlooks the Civil War battlefield site on the fields below the Warwickshire village of Edgehill. With a gradient of 1 in 6 and two acutely sharp corners in quick succession at its steepest part, it is still quite a challenge to today’s riders on modern machinery. So if a 1920s motorcycle could conquer Sunrising Hill, then it could, to all intents and purposes, cope with just about anything in the British Isles.
Once “over the hump” of Sunrising or the other hills on the limestone ridge then there only remained a gentle downward cruise of six miles into Banbury, where its cafes offered refreshments before the riders began their return journeys. Unsurprisingly, the town became the destination of choice for the motorcycle testers of the time, and very soon, they were talking of going on “the Banbury run”.
In 1949, the VMCC decided to re-create the run, and around 80 riders set off from the car park of the Wagon & Horses pub in Sheldon, Birmingham, to follow a 42-mile route through Warwick to its traditional finishing point in Banbury’s marketplace. For the following year, the route was reversed and started at the Crown Hotel in front of Banbury’s town hall before going on to the finish at the BSA Sports Ground adjacent to the factory in Small Heath.
From 1951 onwards, the Banbury Run followed a circular route, starting and finishing in the town from which it took its name. The number of entrants doubled to around 160, and the event continued to grow. By the time it was relocated in 1958 to Honeybourne Aerodrome, near Evesham in Worcestershire, more than 300 riders were taking part.
Naturally, Banbury was always the outward destination, and in 1964, the start/finish location was returned to the town. There, it remained for most of the next 45 years, apart from a move twenty miles south to Blenheim Palace in 1987 and then twenty miles east to Towcester Racecourse in Northamptonshire for three years from 1996—both times when various redevelopment projects in Banbury made it impossible to find a suitable location in the town.
The millennium was celebrated with a return to Banbury in 2000, and in 2009, the final move was made in time for the event to celebrate its Diamond Jubilee at the superb British Motor Museum midway between Banbury and Warwick at Gaydon in South Warwickshire. Hopefully, that is where it will remain in the foreseeable future, as the museum is logically the perfect location for the event. Not only does it offer first-class facilities along with the amount of space that such a gathering needs, but it is also right on the route that those motorcycle testers from the Birmingham factories of the pre-WWII era would have taken as they made “the Banbury run”.
Class A: Veteran. Machines manufactured before 1915
Average speed to be maintained: 15mph = 4 minutes per mile.
Class A1: Veteran. Machines manufactured before 1915
Average speed to be maintained: 18mph = 3.33 minutes per mile.
Class B: Early Vintage. Machines manufactured between 1915 and1924
Average speed to be maintained: 20mph = 3 minutes per mile.
Class C: Late Vintage. Machines manufactured between 1925 and 1931. Average speed to be maintained: 24mph. = 2½ minutes per mile.
