Bristol

There are few things that excite me as much as hot air balloons.  I don't know if it is their size, simplicity, freedom, or lack of control, but they make me feel like a kid again, and only my fear of heights keeps me from clambering aboard every time I see one.

So when I heard about the Bristol balloon fiesta -- the largest in the UK -- I immediately booked a B&B.  Unfortunately, I heard about it on the last day of the event, which meant I had to wait an entire year for the next one!  And when we finally arrived, the weather turned bad and Jess and I spent two days in the wet and wind watching a whole lot of nothing.  We saw the balloon glow on Saturday night, which was lovely, but four of the five mass ascentions were cancelled.

The fifth was on Sunday evening, and Jess and I hadn't planned to stay -- London was a 3 hour drive, and we wanted to avoid Sunday night traffic -- but that afternoon we found ourselves on a hill overlooking the entire Bristol valley, watching the Red Arrows (the UK equivalent of the Blue Angels) putting on a spectacular display.  A herd of cows were grazing nearby, the sun had come out, and we decided to wait for the balloon launch at 6pm.

At 6:30pm, gray clouds had moved in again, it had gotten cold, and we had packed up and were headed for the car when a single balloon appeared in the sky.  We looked back and could see, four miles away, many balloons inflated and ready to go.  For the next hour, we watched them lift off, some coming over us, most staying low and drifting along the horizon.  When we got in our car and headed back to the motorway, we saw several coming down.

The final count was 31 balloons, a far cry from the 500 or so that typically go up in Albuquerque.  (By the same token, only 60,000 people attended Bristol, compared to 750,000 in Albuquerque.)  Unfortunately, Bristol had also chosen to turn the balloon show into a huge 'fun fair' (carnival), creating a lot of unnecessary traffic and noise -- and the reason Jess and I went up into the hills rather than the balloon field.

Still, we had a fantastic weekend, which included viewing the SS Great Britain, the first iron steamship.  When launched in 1843, it was the largest vessel afloat, but the company soon ran into financial difficulties and it was sold off and used for transporting immigrants to Australia, then as a warehouse in the Falklands.  In 1937, it was scuttled and lay half-submerged until 1970, when it was towed back to Bristol and put in a dry dock.  They restored the interior but all they could do to the hull was to stop the rust, and they did this in a very innovative way: They created a glass "sea" at the water line, which is air tight, and dehumidifiers keep the air below at 20% humidity.  Water actually flows over the top of the glass and you can walk around underneath, which is quite surreal.

Sunday was perfect--waking before dawn, walking to the balloon field in the dark, lying in the grass sipping tea while the sun rose and a few hopeful balloons inflated and then deflated and were packed away again, walking back to the B&B for a full breakfast, taking a short nap, then driving through the city, across a beautiful suspension bridge, then out into the countryside and hills, and lying in the sun for a couple of hours while jet fighters and hot air balloons entertained us.  How much better does it get?

You can see photos here, and here's a short video of the balloon glow: