{"id":19847,"date":"2015-08-08T07:40:28","date_gmt":"2015-08-08T06:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=19847"},"modified":"2015-08-08T07:53:32","modified_gmt":"2015-08-08T06:53:32","slug":"a-flying-visit-to-the-balloon-fiesta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/08\/a-flying-visit-to-the-balloon-fiesta\/","title":{"rendered":"A Flying Visit to the Balloon Fiesta"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were in Bristol last weekend for a large family picnic<\/a>, but as we were about to leave Morgan decided he wanted to stay the week with his cousins who were staying with my Mum and Dad, so we left him there and had a short, but quiet week at home. Anna and I then drove back down to my parents on Thursday evening to collect him. We arrived there at around 9pm, had a drink and a chat and then headed off to bed ready for an early start.<\/p>\n

As we were there on the weekend of the International Balloon Fiesta we thought it would be a good ideas to watch the morning mass ascent before heading home. The ascent starts at 6am, so we wanted to be there for 5:30am. It’s usually a half hour or so drive from my parents house but we were expecting lots of traffic and queues heading into the Balloon Fiesta so we wanted to leave at 4:30am to give ourselves time to get there and not miss anything. That meant getting up at 4am after very little sleep. Morgan wasn’t quite with it at that time of day but we bundled him and our belongings into the car and headed off into the darkness.<\/p>\n

As it happens, there was no traffic whatsoever. All the horror stories of massives queues and long delays were no where to be seen, In fact we barely saw any other cars and when we arrived a little earlier than expected at Ashton Court we were the only car in the car park. It was now getting light though so we grabbed our picnic blankets and headed down towards the main arena to pick our spot on the wet grass. We weren’t the only ones there, but it was by no means busy.<\/p>\n

\"Quiet<\/a>

Quiet Start<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The balloonists were already hard at work though, laying out their balloons on the grass and testing their burners so there was plenty to watch as we sat there trying to keep warm under a blanket and sipping coffee.<\/p>\n\n\t\t