On Sunday Maria and I finally got to go on the hot air balloon trip that I’ve been promising her for so long.
It was a beautifully sunny day, but a little windy so we didn’t know if it was going to be OK to fly and in fact the flights that morning had been called off. A quick phonecall to the company and we were told that all was on for a 5:30 pm start.
We headed down to the company HQ where we packed onboard the close support vehicles and drove off into the wilds outside the city.
The wind was coming from the west, so we headed way out of the city in fact closer to Västerås than to Stockholm. At this point we kind of realised that we weren’t going to be able to fly over the city and that was a little disappointing, but life must go on and we had to help put up the balloon.
Somehow the fact that my Swedish is so bad made me volunteer for the most dangerous of all the jobs, i.e holding the balloon open while they fire jets of hot gas inside. It might not look too warm, but I can assure you that I was worried for my eyebrows on more than one occasion.
For once in my life I wasn’t the biggest balloon on show, our balloon had a volume of about 600,000 ft³ in order to carry 16 people. It took a long time to fill… My arms got tired…
Then before I knew it, it was time to jump in the basket and we were up, up and away. It was amazingly fast and amazingly quiet as we floated away and amazingly warm every time the pilot turned on the gas. We floated over the forests and lakes and could see dear running through the trees and fishermen in their boats. It is an amazing way to travel as it’s so smooth and you don’t feel at all trapped in. The sides of the basket only came up to around belly height and you could cautiously lean over and see how little was supporting you up in the air.
Of course we took loads of pictures and video! Some of them are over the town of Upplands Väsby which was the only densely populated area we flew over.
We landed to the north of Stockholm with a bump, and it’s when you start to get close to the ground that you realise there isn’t much to keep you inside the basket! When we landed it was time to get the balloon packed up and then enjoy a glass of Champaign. In fact, because it was our first time flying in a balloon we had to get baptised with Champaign by the pilot pouring it out the bottle and over our heads.
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Flying in a balloon was an excellent experience, but it was a shame that we never got to fly over the city. But, as Maria says, it gives us a reason to do it again!
Here’s a little video…
