Thursday 19 April 2018

An unexpected visitor

I was intrigued, early this morning, by a strange sound coming from outside.  I went to look, and a hot air balloon had landed in the field next door, and was being kept vertical with regular noisy bursts of a gas burner.


I have seen this balloon drift past on a few occasions before, but this was the first time it had landed anywhere nearby.  It was piloted by an instructor and two trainees.  There was no wind at ground level, but, according to the instructor, the air was moving at about 20kph higher up.  When this wind comes down to ground level, as it is sure to do at some time, landing the balloon would be difficult and dangerous, so he decided to land early.


There was a lot of dew on the grass in the field, so they asked if they could bring the balloon into the car park to deflate it, so it wouldn't get wet.  So they walked it across the road (with a little difficulty), deflated it in the car park, wrapped it up and had a quick coffee while they waited for the retrieval car to fetch them.


3 comments:

helen devries said...

I wonder how those balloons would fare in Costa Rica?

CherryPie said...

A great photo opportunity for you :-)

James Higham said...

That made your weekend.

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