The iconic Bristol International Balloon Fiesta returns to Ashton Court Estate this weekend (August 8 to 10) with an incredible line-up of hot air balloons, including some with very creative special shapes.
The festival celebrates the city’s rich heritage in hot air ballooning and will be packed with a jam-packed programme of entertainment, activities, food and hot air balloons.
Ben Hardy, Executive Director of Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, and Clive Bailey, Flight Director, share what to expect at this year's festival.
00:00We're at Ashton Courts Day, where the iconic Balloon Fiesta will be taking over this weekend.
00:06Let's find out what this year's festival has to offer.
00:10We've got three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
00:13We're having Master Sense, 6am and 6pm every day.
00:16And also two nightclothes on Friday and Saturday at 9 o'clock.
00:20We're in our 47th year. It all starts tomorrow morning.
00:24We've got just one of a hundred balloons entered. We've got a lot of model balloons as well.
00:28As you've just seen, we've got In The Clouds, which is a fantastic, immersive walk inside a balloon.
00:34There's a little bit of history about ballooning.
00:36In The Clouds, which gives you the opportunity to come inside a cold-inflated hot air balloon
00:42and watch our film, In The Clouds, produced by the BBC.
00:47Well, In The Clouds was really a way of explaining how balloons work.
00:52So you can go inside an actual hot air balloon. That is an actual hot air balloon in there.
00:56And then there's a history from the BBC archives about Don Cameron's first balloon, the Bristol Bell.
01:02Which is still about now. It doesn't fly anymore.
01:04And it's about flying that balloon. Very, very old balloon. Small burn.
01:08It's really interesting. You can actually get there and see what it's all about.
01:12Normally everyone that comes to the fiesta, they watch the balloons take off inside the launch field and they fly off.
01:18And you can't really get that up close to them.
01:20But actually what we're doing here is asking everyone to come inside an actual hot air balloon and take a look from the inside.
01:28But you mentioned the weather will be good. Does that mean we can hopefully be expecting the massive sands happening in the morning and evenings this weekend?
01:36No. So I never look forward any further forward than the next day.
01:42So tomorrow morning is going to be fabulous. But it's going to be dry. We'll certainly get all the mornings in.
01:47And I'm fingers crossed we'll get the evenings as well. It's looking very, very good.
01:51And what factors do you look in the weather for the massive sands to happen?
01:57So for the weather, what we look for are low winds. We want less than five or six miles an hour on the surface.
02:04And the upper winds are also quite important for us. We want really less than 15, 16 miles an hour up above.
02:10And then no low cloud, no precipitation, no instability and certainly no thunderstorms.
02:16My highlight this year is going to be Oggy, the special shaped dragon.
02:19He's 143 foot tall, green, doesn't breathe fire, so he's a friendly dragon.
02:26And he'll be flying hopefully tomorrow morning over the city.
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