On Sunday 11th May, we brought three of our special shape hot air balloons to life at Snake Meadows in Saltford. What started as a quiet idea turned into a relaxed evening with friends, a few hundred spectators, and some rare shapes that don’t come out often. From Sonic the Hedgehog to a giant Nivea roll-on, it was one of those simple but satisfying ballooning nights that reminds us why we do it.
A beautiful evening at Bath Hot Air Balloon Club’s Snake Meadows on Saturday meant it was of course time for some ballooning. No flying as the winds were dropping a little too late. A last-minute plan to inflate the Ordnance Survey map special shape, which has recently joined Bristol Balloon Collectors, was formed. I met a few of the team at the storage to get G-MAPS loaded into the trailer and down to the meadows we went, where Liam managed a successful 10-minute inflation.
Once the balloon was pulled down, we were looking at the weather and it seemed like the thundery showers forecasted for Sunday would clear through by evening. Should we organise some inflations and advertise it to the public? Yes, we should, so we did!
Jerry, owner of Bath Hot Air Balloon Club and the field, was up for inflating one of my shapes alongside Liam on another. Deciding which ones to get out is a lot more difficult than it used to be, as the collection has grown into 12 special shapes. Firstly, I decided on Sonic the Hedgehog, an all-time classic of the shape world and loved by kids and families, I knew this would be very popular. The last time we inflated Sonic locally was at Ashton Court in October 2023 when over 1,000 people turned up to watch. Since then, followers of the site had been asking when Sonic would appear in Bath, so this was a perfect chance to get this crossed off the to do list.
The Nivea roll-on deodorant, which we got over from France at the end of last year, would be the second, as at this point, we’d only inflated it once. This would be F-GOUD’s second ever UK inflation after initial test inflation in 1999 and is a real rare one, and I thought people would enjoy seeing something new.
So, it was all arranged with our small team and Sunday awaited…
Sunday morning arrived and the first thing I did was check the weather forecast; we were in the clear, for the evening anyway. Jerry, Liam, Craig and I were pretty confident any rain would be gone by around 5pm, and that’s exactly what happened. It was a warm day as well, so it helped dry the ground up quickly.
Late morning I had an idea of adding the J&B whisky bottle to the line-up to make it three shapes instead of two. I hadn’t seen J&B since before last year’s balloon fiesta, as when it appeared I was on retrieve for a big dragon somewhere not very near Bristol! Craig was up for coming down to the field for the arranged meeting time of 6pm. I was very excited, and so too were the public coming along to watch.
As with any flight or inflation like this with our special shapes, only our team see the work that goes in behind the scenes to make it happen. We met hours before the meeting time to go to my storage lockup to load Nivea and J&B into the trailer, later joined by Sonic. This was just after some torrential downpours with thunder booming overhead, but as the forecast said, it would clear and hopefully be nothing to worry about.
We arrived at Snake Meadows with the sun shining, completely dry ground conditions and a clear weather radar. Time to get the balloons out! We all got the baskets set up along with individual three-point tethers and me and James dropped each shape a few meters in front of each basket. Jerry and JP would be in charge of Nivea, Craig on J&B and Liam and Mandy on our star of the show, Sonic!
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Nivea is straightforward to set up as it uses the standard parachute and has no additional Velcros to seal. J&B doesn’t have a parachute; instead, two triangular panels, which were already sealed as it was last at Cameron Balloons having new Velcro fitted ahead of more planned flights this year. As Sonic was being inflated, I was running around underneath sealing the remaining Velcro slots which were open from deflation at Icons of the Sky last September. Once all were stood up, we put the fan back on quickly to inflate Sonic’s red sneakers. He’s an old hedgehog, they don’t like to inflate naturally anymore!
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Hundreds of spectators, both followers of MJ Ballooning and Bath Hot Air Balloon Club, came along to watch the magical spectacle and rare right of three special shapes inflated beside each other. Hot inflation began at 7:25pm and the stand up lasted 15 minutes. The balloons looked fantastic and conditions were good despite a few pesky gusts. It was great to see such a range of ages enjoying seeing the shapes.
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I think back four years ago when we inflated my first three balloons: Lips, Choc Dips and hopper, at Ashton Court in June 2021. At the time organising this was a huge deal for me. And look at us now, with three shapes inflated together and one of them being Sonic. A dream come true and I’m so glad we could make it happen. Thanks to everyone.
Let’s do it again sometime, yeah?
See you soon - Matt
