Last weekend was the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta 2016 at Ashton Court. My Dad and Step Mum were down for the weekend so we decided to go and make a day of it. The Fiesta is a free event that takes place every year and is one of the largest in Europe.
Every year the balloons fly over our house so it was nice to actually go and see them up close.
The Fiesta took place over four days and included a wide range of things to see and do. It started on the Thursday with the night glow. This is when some of the balloons are tethered to the ground and they light up to music. On the Friday the balloons were supposed to take off in the morning and evening but because of the poor flying conditions (it was too windy), they didn’t go up. We all had our fingers crossed they would be going up on the Saturday.
As Karl and I live so close to Ashton Court, we decided we would all walk to the event. We loaded ourselves up with picnic blankets, chairs and even a rather fabulous picnic. How very British!
The Fiesta is all outdoors with the arena in the centre and grass hills all around it to sit on. We picked a perfect spot with a great view of the arena.
As we arrived quite late in the afternoon, we missed some of the arena entertainment but our first proper taste of the entertainment came from watching the Muscle Bi-Plane. The owner of the plane had made special mechanical changes to it which meant it could fly in ways you never thought a plane could fly. It was awesome!
Nothing else really happened in the arena after that. The next thing would be the balloon ascent…hopefully! The balloon trailers and their pilots started entering the arena to lay out the balloons. Nobody knew if they would be flying, not even the pilots! As you can imagine, we all suddenly became balloon weather experts and discussed how we believed the weather conditions were fine for them to fly.
More and more balloons were being brought in and a tannoy announcement confirmed they would soon be able to confirm if the ascent would be taking place. This would be done by coloured smoke. It the smoke showed as red the balloons wouldn’t be going up at all, yellow and they would be tethered to the ground but inflated and green meant they could fly. We waited and waited and the decision was made…the smoke was green, yay! For the first time at this years Fiesta, the balloons were going up.
There was a huge siren which was the queue for the balloonists to start pumping the balloons with hot air. Soon the flat pieces of material that had been laying on the ground had started to transform in to beautiful hot air balloons and were lifting off and flying over our heads. They were so close we could see the pilots waving at us out of the baskets. The balloons are so big and there’s so many of them, they filled up the sky above Ashton Gate and would go on to float across Bristol’s skyline. I believe there was around 80 balloons altogether.
Everyone was on a high from seeing the balloons, it really was spectacular and that wasn’t even the end as there was still the night glow and fireworks to come!
Whilst we were waiting for it to get dark, we decided to start our picnic, have a few drinks and have a wander around the stalls. We didn’t end up buying anything though so we headed back to our little camp ready for the night glow.
Once again the trailers started to come into the arena as the sun went down and started to be inflated. Over the tannoy this time was a story, a story about Bristol. It told us how wonderful a place Bristol was and how we were all so proud to live there. Haunting music then started and the balloons came to life. Various songs played over the course of around 30 minutes with the balloons lighting up to the beat. It was simply stunning and quite emotional. Trying to explain to you how amazing it was really wouldn’t do it justice. It really has to be seen to be believed. I did take some photographs but they don’t really do it justice as they’re static.
As soon as the balloons started to deflate there was a massive bang to the right of us; the fireworks had started!
It was a pretty good display, really entertaining, very pretty and actually lasted for quite a while. Karl and I both said they reminded us of Disney fireworks, awwww.
By the time the fireworks had finished it was around 10:30pm. We’d all had an amazing day and we’d seen so much. I love the fact the Fiesta is FREE and family friendly, it’s a really lovely event.
Signing off.
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