This weekend was the Northampton Balloon Festival. I was quite excited by this prospect, as I've only ever seen a few hot air balloons in my life, usually through car windows - never up close. The balloons were released or 'untethered,' (if you want the official balloon speak) at 6am and 6pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
On Friday evening Pete and I ventured out of Northampton to the village of Hardingstone, just south of town, to watch from a height. We parked the car on a hill with a good view and stood in a corn field, waiting for a swathe of colour and tear drop shapes to fill the sky. They did, but rather unconvincingly. I was surprised later, to find out it was actually a race. It just looked like a few people mucking about in balloons. The pace did pick up a little bit later on, but it was nothing in comparison to what I'd imagine in my head. An over-active imagination can do that to you..
Yesterday, was even worse. My parents came to visit, and we actually paid the £4 entrance to get into the balloon festival, hoping that perhaps Friday had just been a practice. I took from the event programme that as Rick Astley (who was the headline act!) was performing on Sat, we could expect them to pull out all the stops on the balloon front and see a glut of shapes fill the sky. We stood in the field. We waited. And we waited. A helicopter took off - that was exciting for a moment. Then came the announcement. It was too windy. Apparently, balloons have to have a maximum of ten knots wind speed at height, and it had been measured at thirty. So, no balloons. No inflated Bertie Bassett. We were gutted. We came home feeling robbed. My parents felt even more robbed - they'd sat in a traffic jam most of the way from London to Northampton and spent an evening in an empty field. Such is the Bristish summer.
On the plus side, I did learn some quite pointless information about hot air ballooning. Maybe I can use it some day.
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