Event
Hyde Park before dawn on the first Sunday of November smells of paraffin, hot oil and coal smoke. Several hundred machines built before 1905 are being coaxed into life by lamplight, some by crank, some by steam pressure, while their crews stand around in period dress waiting for sunrise, which is when the first cars are flagged away toward the coast.
The 2026 Run takes place on 1 November and marks 130 years since the Emancipation Run of 1896, held to celebrate the law that raised the speed limit for motor vehicles from 4 to 14 mph and abolished the man walking ahead with a red flag. Entry is restricted to vehicles manufactured before 1905, verified by dating certificate, and the route remains the original 60 miles from Hyde Park to Madeira Drive in Brighton.
This is not a race. Cars leave in waves, breakdowns are constant and half the spectacle is watching crews solve 120-year-old problems on a grass verge in Surrey. Purists swear by the lamplit start in Hyde Park, which requires standing at the park gates before sunrise and is over by mid-morning. Brighton is where the day actually happens: arrivals roll onto Madeira Drive from around 10:00 until mid-afternoon, the cars stay lined up along the seafront, and you see most of the field without setting an alarm.
If you want to follow the field, stay off the modern A23 dual carriageway and take the old road through the Sussex villages instead, via Cuckfield and the B2036 toward Pyecombe. That is the route the veterans use, and it lets you leapfrog the slower cars three or four times before the sea appears.
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