ABR Festival 2026
With 2026 being the second ABR Festival I’ve attended I knew what I was in store for.
After my first ABR Festival last year I decided to get a Super Thursday ticket so I could get there early and get set up before the main festival started. Although it’s fair to say there is a huge amount of stuff to do already on the Thursday! It was going to be an exceptionally hot day today (around Ragley Hall 36 degrees “feeling like 38”) so I decided to leave London early and get up to Warwickshire as early as I could. I got up at 4am, my second 4am start in two days, and packed my bike. Heading out of London around 6am it was great to be on the road again with my camping equipment and bike!
The M40 took me up towards Ragley Hall and I stopped mid-way for some breakfast. Although the Starbucks sausage bap was one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten so I was really happy to be going to a place with so much good food on offer!
The trip from London, at least from west London, was actually a lot quicker than I expected and I arrived at the gates just as they were opening. There were already loads of bikers there keen to start the weekend! Next was check-in where I got a wristband, programme, bike sticker, and importantly my Bridgestone Trail Pass sticker for my helmet!
A few of us were camping together so we’d shared a what3words location ahead of time which was great because there really is next to no signal on site. I had my Garmin InReach Mini 2 with me which meant I could send SMS messages from my phone via satellite though so that was pretty handy! But regular SMS messages were hard to send.
As I got set up I saw a couple of other people setting up nearby and didn’t realise at that point that they were friends of friends coming to camp near the same what3words and would become friends over the weekend! That first night I slept like an absolute log, helped in part by only having 6 hours sleep in the last 60 hours and also by the beer we’d consumed in our first evening.
Of course ABR Festival has more than just music, beer, bikes, and food. One of the talks I was keen to get to was Lavi & Ollie who are a couple of the nciest people you could meet in biking—a community with a lot of nice people! Their YouTube channel is really lovely and their down-to-earth and caring approach is great to watch.
I also saw my friend Elissa’s talk. She’s an incredible person, special missions pilot, biker, and breathwork coach. I highly suspect that me as a kid would be amazed I knew a cool person like that when I grew up! Last year we camped together although this year she was in the exhibitor’s field, a place which I heard whisper has shade from the unrelenting sun!
There are a lot of other big names from adventure motorcycling and over the weekend I spotted Saffy Sprocket, The Missenden Flyer, Simon & Steff from The Wandering Honda, Kinga Tanajewska from onherbike, Richard Hammond (not a real hamster), and saw Richy Vida too.
Also at ABR Festival, of course, is the Bridgestone off-road trail! I’d been really keen to ride my Africa Twin on that so I grabbed the chance first thing on Friday morning to head for the trail!
The trail itself is something like 40km winding through fields, woodland, and dirt roads and is an absolute blast! My bike is incredible in this type of environment even though it’s a big bike. It felt like the crossers I used to ride around the farm when I was a kid!
After the trails I was absolutely covered in dust, with a face like a coalminer! My goggles did a great job of keeping the dust out of my eyes but that just made the dirty chin look even weirder! So I headed for a shower. There is often a massive queue for the showers, which are actually really great, although around lunchtime they’re usually quite quiet, especially on Friday lunchtime when most people are just arriving and thus aren’t covered in dust yet!
ABR Festival has a lot of music happening too and we really enjoyed Limehouse Lizzy and a bunch of the other bands. Over the weekend I especially loved the Fleetwood Mac tribute act, Fleetwood Bac
Of course the stars of the show are the bikes and there really isn’t a better place I know to see such a wide range of bikes from C90s to Fireblades to Kove crossers to Africa Twins!
Of course the food is important too and I absolutely loved Thyme & Tide as their seafood was straight-up delicious! I went a few times for a scallop and bacon roll, a “posh” fish finger sandwhich, and the best meal I had all weekend; brown crab fries and deep fried squid! It was salty, fishy…and deep fried!
After spending time with new friends and old, drinking beer, listening to music, and riding bikes it was sadly time to pack up and go home again. If last year I felt a bit overwhelmed and out of place, this year I felt like it was home and I can only thank the wonderful people I met for making me feel so welcome there as a solo person.
Also I’ve just bought my ticket for 2027 so, if you’re going, I’ll see you there!