Vintage days out: The Brooklands Double Twelve Motorsport Festival

We had a great vintage family day out on Saturday at one of my favourite places: Brooklands Museum. The atmostphere there invariably transports me back to a bygone age and it’s always a pleasure to visit. If you haven’t heard of it before Brooklands Museum is the ‘home of British motorsport and aviation’.

Brooklands is an important place. It was the first purpose built race track in the world with it’s famous banked circuit and many racing greats including Land Speed Record breaker Malcolm Campbell and John Cobb made it their home. It’s also famous for many aviation-related things, but I don’t know as much about those, ask my great friend Nick at The Scarf & Goggles Social Club if you’d like to know about that kind of thing! When the Second World War broke out in 1939 Brooklands was used as an air base and never again saw live racing, unless you believe the ghost stories which claim that ghostly racers still thunder along the banking on dark nights when the moon is full…

We went to the Double Twelve Motorsport Festival, which was a fantastic day out. Not only were there some stunning vintage and classic cars doing the Brooklands hill climb, but there was an entertainment tent featuring songs by the wonderful Noelle Vaughn and swing dancing.

My son Theo, who’s just turned 7, was very taken with the swing dancing (as you can see below) but we really weren’t good enough to have a go as everyone else looked so proficient, but we’ve promised to learn how to swing dance before we go to Goodwood Revival later in the year!

Since I’m a bit of a petrolhead the highlight of the day was the running of the amazing Napier Railton from 1933, which still holds the lap record of an AVERAGE of 143.44mph. It had to be push started, which I didn’t expect, and this video is well worth a watch, the sound it makes is just incredible!

*sorry I’m having a bit of trouble uploading this video, I’ll upload it here ASAP!*

Hope you like my photos, I particularly love the lady wearing the vintage 1930s crepe dress – she looked wonderfully chic!

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