Bristol International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta 2011

event :: Bristol International Balloon Fiesta 2011
date :: 11th - 14th August 2011
Venue :: ashton court, bristol, uk
theme :: yellow + red.

[1] In the UK, Bristol city is best known for its hot air balloon fiesta. This is our third time visiting the event. Of course we try not to miss this yearly event. The first year, we enjoyed the view of the balloons from the park near Clifton Suspension Bridge. The second year, we tried both at Ashton Court and at the bridge. But this year, hubbykun decided to enjoy the view just at the Ashton Court.




[2] The balloon mass launch is held twice daily from Friday-Sunday: one at 6am and the other at 6pm. Again, similar to last year, the festival occurred during the month of Ramadhan. On Thursday and Saturday were the time when there are also night glow where the balloons are light up according to the beat of the music played. This year's night glow was sponsored by Marriott Hotel while ast year it was HSBC. We went to the night glow last year. I would have loved to go again this year, but between the 18 hours of fasting during summer and hubbykun saying that he couldn't get high quality shots because it was rather dark, we decided to pass.




[3] You can reach Ashton Court by bus or on-foot. If you start from the city centre, journey by bus takes around 10 minutes while walking may take around 1 hour. Special bus services with ~10 minutes time interval between them were available throughout the event. Unfortunately the bus service only starts at 10am, which means that there are no bus if you're planning to go to Ashton court for the 6am mass launch.




[4] So far, we've discovered two walking route to Ashton Court. One is following the harbourside, rather flat path but slightly longer distance. The other is through Clifton Bridge, quite a hilly walk but shorter route. Since Clifton bridge is closed to the public on night glows and on evening mass balloon launch, you'd have to take the first route during this time. For the morning balloon launch, we took the Clifton bridge route and started walking at the early hour of 4.30am to be there in time.




[5] When we reached Ashton Court, the gate was not yet opened maybe because we were a little early (it was about 5.30am). there were a number of early risers like us too. We saw them climbing the walls to get inside and just followed suit. Luckily the walls were not too high, just about waist-height. just when we reached inside, the gates were open. cait! That day, I forgot to bring my sunglasses too! The super early wake up time and the lack of sleep explains the swollen eyes huhu..




[6] For the mass balloons launch, there were as many as 96 balloons being launch one after another. It was a really an amazing sight! We overheard a conversation from someone around. he was saying something in the line of "not that many places in the world can have a view quite like this". that is so very true. reminded us of how very fortunate for us to be here :)




[7] There were also some nice odd shapes balloons that were launched. Some of which I remembered are square, dog, motorbike, dragon and cyclindrical battery-shaped balloons. Neat!




[8] This one is a chicken head balloon! haha.




[9] Besides the real-life size balloons, there were also some miniature size ones that was on display. There were really cute ones like a teddy bear and a bumble bee.




[10] I was looking for the University of Bristol (UoB) balloon but the balloon pumping location was a bit far to the place where we were viewing. The uni has a balloon society and according to a friend of mine who joined this club, you'd get a discount for a ride in the UoB balloon if you're a member. Farah told me that to enjoy a ride on a balloon during the fiesta's mass launch would cost around £180 (err a bit off our budget). Not sure how much the UoB balloon club would cost though. I asked hubbykun to zoom a picture of the balloon. He did captur it on video link below, but the picture quality wasn't too good though.




[11] Among the few pix of hubbykun taken by yours truly hehe. isn't my darling so adorable? ;) he spent quite a bit of time for time lapse video this time around as shown in the video. because the video was made into fast forward, the balloons ascending to the air and myself looked really funny there.




[12] we went on Friday where there were not too many people. This made taking pictures much easier according to hubbykun. I can also run around left and right to pose for pictures. Last year we went on a Sunday, and because it was the last day of the event, there were so many people! Hubbykun also said that the pictures quality turned out much nicer this year compared to the last because he can move freely to get a good composition ;)




[13] I went home early from school and hubbykun get off early from work so that we can meeet at city center and take bus together. Hubbykun got on the bus in front of Primark while I took the one near harbourside. The ticket cost £2/person each way.




[14] On Satuday, we decided not to go because there'll be a huge crowd at the evening mass launch. These are people who would also be waiting for the night glow event. While we were staying at home, we saw balloons from our room window during the mass launch hour. It was very beautiful but this is not the usual route they would take though (it could be because of the wind blow to a different direction). We didn't see this last year.




[15] Hubbykun read online that the fact that the winds were blowing towards the direction of the city centre making the ballons crossing the Clifton bridge was really special. The  it happened was ~20 years ago? We saw some photos from people who were viewing the balloons at Clifton bridge and the pictures were amazing! The balloons appeared really big next to the bridge. Hubbykun was complaining to me that he wished he was there too! aiyark!




[16] The weather was a bit cloudy this year. But I think compared to last year, it seemed like the coordinators were trying very hard to still launch the balloons. Hubbykun said that he guessed that the balloon launch probably depend more on the wind conditions. For example. on Sunday afternoon though, even though the weather was considerably sunny and it was clear blue sky, we were informed through the speakers that the balloons couldnt ascend due to the strong wind, oh no!




[17] Even though we have seen the launch in the morning the day before, we were still hugely dissappointed. Farah told me that she was there too and in fact was at the Heaven Hill side (same as us), but we didn't come across them because of the huge crowd during that day. Because the weather was sunny, people still had fun staying out and enjoying the rest of the festival.




[18] There was a huge selection of funfair games to picked from. Although I have to admit most of them looked like the main objective is to give people a severe headache? :P




[19] There were also plenty of booths selling all kinds of beverages and food. In fact there was a small factory outlet booth too. So you can spend your frustration of not seeing balloon with shopping instead. We even bought a picnic mat here, but never get a chance to use them because we only came across it on the last day and when we were about to head home already hahaha.




[20] Saw a Yakult booth there too! We bought 4 packs of 7 bottles, of which mostly I was the one who finished them :P There were some free or cheap goodie bags too that you can get hold on :D




[21] We saw that there was also a nice launch and picnic area sponsored by the Bristol heart FM 96.3. There were some bubble-blowing fan near a the Heart FM promo car and I wanted to take a photo while the bubbles were surrounding me. But there was 2 happy kids having much fun catching the bubbles. No luck to pose there then ;)




[22] We spent a bit of gazing at the deers in the Ashton Court deer park (check out the video). There were a few varieties of them actually. Some white ones and red deers too. The deers antlers were really beautiful. It looked like those in santa's sledding. We visited krakow back in winter 2010 and hubby wanted to try some dog sledding after watching some clips on the internet. Unfortunately, due to time constraint and the location of the sledding which was quite far from the city, we didnt get a chance to try that.




[23] There was also a red arrow (royal air force aerobatic team) performance on Sunday right before the supposed balloon launch. It seemed like flying in synchronised and so close together between the flights really take a lot of skill and training. Among the red arrow team, we were informed that one of the pilot is a woman. Coolness ;)




[24] Our view was slightly blocked by a tree, but we managed to get some good shots too and managed to join in many 'ooh' 'aah' together with the crowd. We read in the news that one of the red arrow pilot had an accident in Brighton during of their performance. The flight was flying too low in the horizon and crashed. The pilot passed away and it was mere days from the show we saw here. Very very sad to hear about this :(




[25] During the walk back home, we made a number of stops near clifton bridge and university area for photo sessions. People passing by must have thought that we were tourists, when in fact we've been here for 3 years now :P





[26] finally, a video of the event. If you can't see the video, click right here.









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