flight aug 08 one

No crew available in Southampton so we took the balloon to Stroud. Pam’s boss Ian drove the retrieve so we rook his daughter Katie in the basket. Perfect conditions for the inflation and take off. Usual crowd of adults and children when rigging – we encourage them to come and look and touch the gear but it does take longer to rig etc.

When the balloon was upright we found the crown line was tangled and could not be clipped to the burner frame. We left it dangling tantalising out in front of us but realised that drifting through the tops of trees was not on.

The wind direction was good and on take off we headed East towards Cirencester. It was one of those perfect flights. We flew over rolling high ground just north of the Stroud Valley – (River Frome) blue skies – perfect views. A mile or so in front we saw a large red Virgin passenger carrier. To the North, Katie spotted 2 balloons near Gloucester and looking back along our track Mark saw one over in Wales. This reminded me that this was the weekend of the Bristol Balloon Fiesta and using the binoculars and sweeping the horizon to the Southwest we could see a mass of balloons about 26 miles away. A paramotor paid us a visit which is always great fun. We had a birds eye view of Kemble airfield and crossed the Frome at Sapperton. We realised that we were flying virtually over the northern end of the famous Sapperton tunnel – a canal tunnel that is about 3 ¼ miles along and was the longest canal tunnel in the world when built on the early 19th century.

There is a very large wood just to the West of Cirencester called Oakley Wood. We dropped down to just above tree top height and drifted along a ridge for about ½ km – magical. We had flown parallel to the A149 but as we climbed we crossed it, flew over the Agricultural College, over the Fosseway over Southern Cirencester (about 2¼ miles from the source of the Thames) and as we were approaching RAF Fairford landed at Siddington. 10 mins earlier we had watched the Virgin balloon go down near South Cerney.

After landing, Pam and Ian were with us in minutes. 3 very well dressed girls in party frocks came to chat and help us as did Doug and his son Jonathan. Believe it or not but Doug was an ex balloonist and offered to crew when we were next in the area.

Ian took us to a pub at Sapperton called the ‘Daneway’. Looking at the map we saw a site marked ‘Alfred’s Hall’ in the wood we flew over. This resulted in a history lesson as we discussed how far West the Danes had driven King Alfred.

If only every flight was like this one. As a bonus Mark took some good photos.