Report - Shakespeare County Raceway - Warwickshire - April 2023

[Grom]

History

One that I'd been aware of for ages, and is soon to be demolished to make way for housing.

The raceway set on the runway of RAF Long Marston opened in 1980, opening with the name Long Marston Raceway. It was renamed Avon Park Raceway' in 1990 and finally renamed Shakespeare County Raceway in 2008.

It was considered to be second only in the UK to the Santa Pod drag stip.

Ultimately it was closed down and sold in 2018 to make way for housing, which as someone on forum put "Houses make more money than homemade V8s".


The Explore

This a pretty easy explore with no real challenges. The Long Marston airfield is slowly being swallowed by the growing housing estate. Much of the site is being used by a local farm, but seems to not be very active.

There are some old WW2 era bunkers, a flooded Battle HQ bunker and some domed pillboxes at the very end of the runway, which made for a long walk.


Photos

A track meeting.

The long walk to the end of the runway.

This battle HQ bunker was very flooded.

A few old WW2 era buildings on the verge of collapse.

 

[Mikeymutt🐶]

That mushroom pillbox is a nice example. One at Warboys next to the BHQ as well. Looks a different explore.

 

[mockney reject]

It’ll be interesting to see what they find when they dig up the grandstand banking.
There were all sorts of stories of what went into it when they built it.

The banking was originally on the opposite side of the track, back when I first went and was swapped over in the 90’s iirc

 

[mookster]

Visited here a couple of times when it was open, also went back a couple of years ago for a nose around but it was nearly dark so took a handful of crap photos - always fancied another look.

 

[Bikin Glynn]

Cant believe that is still unchanged with the building work all around it.
Few bits I missed there too so may have to do a revisit

 

[Calamity Jane]

Nice mix of areas to shoot. I do like ww2 structures. The cars and machinery nice to see. More houses! tbh this build build build attitude grates on me.