Sunday, August 06, 2006

Balloons over Basingstoke

This afternoon to Basingstoke for the balloon festival.

Here is a picture of the most risque balloon.


The event, at the War Memorial Park, was hard to find through Basingstoke's one-way system, but after we had parked-and-rode, the first thing we saw was a parachute display team - you can see it on the video here.

[10.6 MB in .wmv format, keep watching at the blank section in the middle].

The balloons launched en masse after 6 p.m. Here is a picture of me in front of one of the balloons. The joke goes that you are meant to figure which is which.



We had a good afternoon, and on the way back to the car we were over-flown by three paramoteur pilots (paragliders with back-mounted engines to keep them up) . Sounds like fun.



The video, BTW, has a few seconds of black in the middle - don't have too much time to edit well. Stay with it for the second half, where the launching balloon's basket collides with a nearby balloon: cue gasps from the audience at this near tragedy ...

It's 28 centigrade this evening and humid - I just knew this Greenhouse Effect would be double-edged ...