The Icicle is the first big Ballooning get together of the year, and even if no one flies there’s always a good social gathering of friends from all over the country. Our team had booked in to a country pub back in September; we had also booked our Balloons in with the Dante group who organised the event so we were still determined to travel down.

Four vehicles made their separate ways to Wootton Rivers near Marlborough Wiltshire, where the country pub was, and where we were all supposed to meet for an evening meal about 8pm.

Martin, Judy and Junior crew member Emily were travelling with their Balloon "Hollybush", Austin Neil and the Boys were in another vehicle, Martin and Annette were going with their Balloon "Sandicliffe" and Ian and I in Ian’s Lanny, needless to say the latter arrived on the back of a transporter yet again!

The pub was nice and the rooms and food were both good. Graeme, David and young Alex and also Steve Greenroyd were coming down on Saturday so between us we virtually took over the pub, there was only 6 rooms on offer!

Briefing for Saturday was at 8am so brekky was arranged for 7 o clock, we were only minutes from the launch site so there was no rushing around, Looking out of the dining room windows the trees in the garden were being bent over by the strong winds and as we set off to the launch site there were downed trees and debris strewn all over the roads most of the way there.

When we arrived there were about twenty people at the briefing and not a Balloon trailer in sight!!
The burger van wasn’t doing much business either.

We checked in anyway, and got our commemorative 33rd Icicle sticker, it was obvious that there was definitely no tethering or flying going to be done today and the forecast for Sunday was only marginal with a glimmer of hope that there may be a slight improvement in the weather.
We made our way to the Hilton Hotel in Swindon where the trade stands were, and where everybody usually meets up. Loads of bargains to be had on the Zebedee stand, and plenty of other traders present as well.

The Balloon manufacturers were well represented, with Ultramagic, Cameron, and Lindstrand being in attendance. Lindstrand were displaying a new idea in passenger comfort, with a glass bottomed Basket - Ok for a splash and dash, or if you wanted to see the fish at the same time as ballooning!!!

I had arranged to meet a friend, Ian Warrington in the car park, by now the wind had really picked up and it was howling across the forecourt. Ian had brought with him the colt 69, which I have been loaned from the Balloon Preservation Group. After struggling to put it away in the back of Martins Discovery, we decided to retire to the bar where we could look at the balloon documents without getting blown away!!

The Balloon was a Virgin Megastore example, registered G-OBUY and with only 75 hours in the log. Looking at the history of the balloon, it was obvious that it was well travelled, Milan, Austria, Germany, Bavaria, Jordan, it had even been as far as Japan advertising the stores and had even been flown by the man himself, Sir Richard Branson!!

After making our way back to the pub at Wootton Rivers we then spent most of the evening chatting in the bar. Graeme, Dave & Steve arrived, so we all met up for a drink and a good laugh telling Ballooney stories and exchanging some interesting ideas as the night progressed.

I woke up early and the wind had dropped considerably, Dave said it didn’t look that good but that’s Dave! We all met for breakfast at 7.00 and talked about the possibilities, but we were going to briefing anyway Martin, Annette, Ian and myself got the trailer hitched up, and headed for the briefing. As we arrived we could see that there were hardly any trailers or cars on the launchsite, a sure indication that nothing was going to happen. At briefing the wind direction was SouthWesterly 5-7 knots and increasing to 9 knots by 10am, the thousand-foot wind was estimated to be 25/30 knots. If anything was going to happen, then we needed to decide now before it got too breezy? I rallied my crew who had arrived in dribs and drabs, thinking that nothing was going to happen, and we all started to drive on to the muddy launch site.

We found a sheltered spot at the bottom of the field and started to rig Martins bottom end up, this got a few curious spectators walking down to where we were, to see what we were doing!!. Of course I wanted to have a look at my new balloon, so we rigged it up and started to inflate G-OBUY Megastore, it was blowing around a bit but I managed to get the balloon upright to the delight of the now quite large crowd that had gathered.

It looked ok from where I was stood in the basket and Mel Kirby shouted across and said it looked fine; all we have to do now is get it airworthy.Once everyone had taken pictures of it I ripped out and we packed it away again, we then decided to inflate Martins Balloon "Sandicliffe" G-BJSW. It was a good inflation and we weren’t buffeted about too much, and we soon had Sandicliffe standing proud, we tethered for a good ten minutes and noticed the wind wasn’t as fierce as we first thought, I was pondering on the thought of going for it when the chaps said why not, of course it did not take much to convince me that it would be ok. I shouted across to Martin to get in quickly as we were going to go for it, just time to bung the maps in and Martin and I were off.

I think Dave and the chaps expected me to just hop in to the next field but as we climbed out over the tree line, a little hot and fast, I decided to go for a longer flight and look for some longer fields. Mart and I had big cheesy grins on our faces as we looked back and waved at the crowds below then as we flew on rapidly, the launch field soon vanishing behind us. Martin brought the Balloon in for a low approach as a really good long field came in to view, we had a good almost perfect stand up landing apart from the envelope acting as a sail and dragging us a bit, We had covered 5 kilometres in just over ten minutes!!

First a few phone calls to assure everyone we were ok, as our retrieve crew had a job keeping up with us, in their hurry they forgot the envelope bag as we took off, and we had to pack the Basket away first then wait for the retrieve to go back for the bag, then pack everything away. We then drove back to the launch site to pick the other Balloon up and put it safely in the trailer before heading back to the Hilton Hotel, just arriving in time for the presentations.

It must have been a record first as we were awarded with four trophies: -

• The Chequers trophy for the longest flight in G-BJSW Sandicliffe
• The Gemini trophy for the oldest balloon G-BJSW Sandicliffe
• The Hilton award for the shortest flight G-BJSW Sandicliffe
• And the Dante trophy for the best looking Balloon G-OBUY Megastore

Mart and I were over the moon; I don’t think we stopped grinning all morning! What a good weekend we had all had, new definition for a one-man meet maybe?

There were celebrations at the debrief all night in our local, and there was even talk of putting a Trophy cabinet up to display our awards!!

The next Icicle Meet will be January 7th 2006 and we hope to see you all there. As for me, I’m going back to Wootton Rivers again next weekend - to retrieve a sick landrover!!

Happy Flying to one and all

Trevor