Last month I went to my first ever Longleat exclusive passholders’ event – the Sky Safari launch. I’ve been a passholder for nearly two years and I do like to go to the Halloween fireworks and/or the New Year ones, go to the Festival of Light and go and see it all in summer. But this is the first time I’ve ever been to the Sky Safari.
It’s the UK’s biggest hot air balloon event. It runs from Friday to Sunday for the general public but they opened it up on Thursday evening to passholders. I thought that meant it would be relatively quiet but oh no! It took more than twenty-five minutes to get from the turning to the tollbooths and traffic had been very slow for the last three or so miles. It usually takes about fifty minutes to get to Longleat. That day it was an hour and twenty-five minutes. And they weren’t even checking tickets at the tollbooth – you pulled up and were told to go straight down rather than waste time on tickets and passes and if you needed anything, go to Guest Services. Which, all in all, took longer than simply scanning the passes.
The Sky Safari launch was due to start at 5.30. I didn’t reach the tollbooths until 5.35 and I expected to see a field of balloons laid out below me as I zoomed (crept!) down the hill towards and house and gardens. Nothing. I parked in the field – the real car park was closed but would have been overflowing anyway – and walked over to the viewing zones, only to find I couldn’t cross the road because so many cars were coming in from the other direction. These turned out to be the balloon teams, who were parked round the back of Longleat somewhere and all came together as a procession to park on the avenue where the ballooning would take place, hence not being able to use the car park, as you’d be running head-on into the procession on the way.
I found myself a nice sunny spot on the grass and sat down to eat my picnic while the balloons were unpacked. By the time I’d finished, they were being set up ready to inflate so I went to watch, having never seen such a thing before.
It goes like this: you spread out your envelope (that’s the bit that inflates; the balloon itself. Quite why they can’t just call it “the balloon”, I don’t know) and lie the basket down next to it. The envelope is inflated using a fan, just the sort of large house fan you might have at home, except it’s powered by a petrol generator. The envelope gradually inflates and when it’s reasonably full, they turn the burners on – twin flame-throwers attached to the top of the frame on top of the basket. They’re powered by “just ordinary propane, just like you‘d use” and they’re used to heat the air that’s already in the balloon. I can’t figure out how they don’t set fire to the envelope or the ropes at this point, although I guess the ropes are probably steel wires.
As the air is heated, the balloon begins to rise. Eventually it’ll rise enough to pull the basket upright, at which point I can understand how the flame doesn’t set fire to anything. When it’s warm enough and full enough, it’ll lift off the ground. The ground crew will get well clear and the pilots will both be in the basket, they’ll undo the tethers and off it goes. And that’s another thing I don’t understand. Most of the balloons are tethered to the support vehicles, which surely aren’t heavy enough to hold down a balloon that really wants to be off.
I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen balloons in the air and on the ground. I’ve never seen them take off and I’ve definitely never seen 120ish all go more or less at once. My 21st century brain finds it dizzying how they seem to just hang in the air – I was surprised at how difficult it was to process what I was seeing. It’s all very pretty, though. The sky was clear, although the light was starting to die, and there were hundreds of balloons in all sorts of shapes and sizes and colours. Longleat has a few animal-shaped ones and the two penguins were out at the launch, Puddles and Splash. One of them is male, one is female and the female one, obviously, is marked by a red skirt (that’s the bit that kind of shields the burners from the wind) rather than a blue one, long eyelashes, a smaller beak and painted toenails. Obviously. While trying to figure out which is which, I discovered that Puddles and Splash got engaged at an event in New Mexico in 2016, so when the commentator referred to Splash as “Puddles’ girlfriend” that was just plain inaccurate.
Next up was the Night Glow but that would have to wait a while. The support vehicles that pick up the balloons from wherever they land were still clearing the site, it was nowhere near dark and the procession hadn’t even started. I used the time to run back to the car to dump my picnic bag, grab an extra warm layer and then go to Guest Services. I’d heard rumours of a food voucher and indeed, I was given one. You can use it anywhere – Longleat has a few permanent food outlets, a few semi-permanent food vans and there was an entire festival’s worth of temporary food vans there for the weekend. Having eaten my picnic, I opted to try my luck in Lord Bath’s Traditional Sweet Shop, where the vouchers were indeed accepted. I got a candy cane and £2 worth each of pineapple cubes and cola cubes, which I’m still eating as I write this, four weeks later.
But back to the balloons. As I returned to the avenue, the balloon teams were getting in the cars and not long after I got back, the procession started. This time everything was being done together. This was a choreographed display. At the afternoon launch, everyone was inflated and launched within a certain time frame but now it was being done together. Twenty balloons were inflated at once, twenty balloons were heated at once, twenty balloons rose at once. This was a tethered display – at least, the balloons remained on the ground. I don’t know if tethered actually means in the sky but tied down so it can’t float off. When everything was inflated, the balloons and teams were introduced to the crowd and then the Night Glow began.
To very loud pop music – I detected Taylor Swift, Pink, Michael Jackson and a lot of others that have slipped my mind in four weeks – the balloons fired their burners, lighting up the balloons in sequence. It was incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was beautiful. I never wanted to see anything else ever again.
Of course, when it was over, it took the best part of an hour to get all those cars out of one entrance. I didn’t even try going back to my car immediately. I watched the balloons being deflated and packed away and I still don’t know how they do it. I think the balloons are deflated by the simple power of will. I can see that rolling and folding squashes the last of the air out but I don’t know how they made the balloons collapse in the first place.
I think hot air ballooning is something I’m going to have to try one day soon and I’ve already put the Sky Safari in my diary for 2019.