Eventually we despaired of ever seeing any balloons in flight. Several hours had passed since we arrived so we decided to head off home. As we were taking the fairly long walk back to the car park we heard a strange noise in the air, and as we looked back we saw that they had actually managed to get a couple of balloons up.

It wasn’t the masses of balloons all taking off at once that we had anticipated, but it was better than nothing I suppose.

Taken with a Sony A77M2 and Tamron A18 AF 18-250mm f3.5-6.3.

Judging from the lines one of the main attractions was the possibility of a ride in a hot air balloon.

They spent a long time trying to get this balloon airborne. First they tried to inflate facing in one direction. Apparently this didn’t work because they deflated it again, picked it up an rotated it through 180 degrees so it was facing in a completely different direction. As I recall this didn’t work well either as they deflated it again and moved it so it was facing in a yet another direction. Eventually they managed to get it partially inflated, but the wind was too strong and the balloon was blowing quite violently from side to side. Eventually they brought it down again and an announcement was made that the winds were too severe for tethered rides. Too bad for those whose only purpose for coming to the festival was to get a balloon ride.

Taken with a Sony A77M2 and Tamron A18 AF 18-250mm f3.5-6.3.