postcards from the bristol balloon fiesta

dear friends,

those of you who follow me on twitter know exactly where i was this weekend. for those who don’t, nic and i headed for bristol to take a hot air balloon ride as part of the bristol balloon fiesta. we took the train over from london on friday night as we had an early start on saturday morning… we needed to be at the site, ready to go by 6am which meant a 4.30 am start!

nice day for a balloon ride

oh, it was most definitely worth it. according to our pilot (who has been doing this for 20 years), we couldn’t have picked a more perfect morning for it. there were no clouds as far as the eye could see, cool still air and the warm sun beaming at us over the horizon.

we were all giving instructions on how to get into the basket, and a safety briefing, then we were off. floating up into the gorgeous bristol morning with the rest of the balloons.

we flew for about 75 minutes, commanding a spectacular view over bristol and the clifton suspension bridge

after a stunning flight and some very welcome bucks fizz, we headed into to town center for some lunch before heading back to our b&b for a quick nap… then, we headed back out to the ashton court estate to see the red arrows.

ak, i was thinking of you as we saw these guys… it’s like the ultimate in drag racing being up there i expect :)

then we watched the balloons go up for the evening flight. there was definitely more of a crowd around this time and finding a good spot was tricky.

after the launch we decided we needed to be closer to the arena, so headed for one of the beer/pimms tents, where we managed to grab a table & chairs right on the fenceline for the finale of the evening, the night glow. set to music & beautifully choreographed, the night glow had the ballooons lighting up for us in an amazing display.

by the time this was done, neither of us could bear the thought of queueing for hours to get on a bus, so waved down a cab and headed straight back for bed. a most amazing day from start to finish.

nic and i both have a stack of photos to sort through… these are just a few of the highlights.