The Birkin Tour

This is a tour for Bentley Driver’s Club members to celebrate the life and times of Sir Tim Birkin. Sir Henry Ralph Stanley Birkin, 3rd Baronet, known as Tim, after the children’s comic book, Tiger Tim, was one of the “Bentley Boys” of the 1920s and a winner of the famous Le Mans race.

Birkin will forever be remembered as the man who created what are now some of the most iconic and sought after cars in the world – the Blower Bentley.

Birkin had come to the conclusion that the future lay in getting more power from racing Bentley’s by fitting a supercharger to the 4½ litre model. When Bentley Motors refused to create the supercharged car, Birkin sought to develop it himself. Although the cars were unreliable and ultimately didn’t secure any high profile results in period racing, the cars with their evocative supercharger sticking out the front of the radiator, became the boyhood dream of just about every car-mad child on the planet at the time.

Our tour through Blakeney and its surroundings, celebrates the life and times of this Bentley Boy, who had a strong affinity and love for Blakeney. He spent many times roaring between this north Norfolk town and Grosvenor Square in London in his Bentley’s. Such was his love for the place, that following his untimely death in 1933 that he was buried in the local churchyard.