Strathaven balloon festival trip 29 - 31 August 2015 - Richard Bowater

 Pictures from the trip  (pictures credited to Richard Bowater (and Sandy Mitchel for G-SNAX)

We were fortunate enough to be invited back to the annual Strathaven Balloon Festival again this year, the only public balloon event in Scotland. In order to break the journey and have a wrest from driving on the way up or down we usually drop into an airfield or two.

This year I decided that we should finally go to East Fortune to see the museum, the resident microlights and based aircraft. Unfortunately the microlight club is closed on a Friday so we had to route past that way on the Monday on the way home.

The outbound route was planned with a lunch break at Carlisle possibly the last visit before things change and they start to get some schedule flights. The main plan here was to try and see the temporary resident Pilatus PC-6s and due to windy weather they were nicely parked up in the large hangar. The resident DA-900 was also present along with the usual suspects in the two GA hangars; my guide didn’t have time to try the other two hangars which contain more GA and micrlights.

 Wth the lunch break over we had an uneventful trip up the M6 and M74 to Strathaven. The only difference this year is we had G-SNAX Thunder Colt 69A Phileas Fogg II in the back seat!

There was no flying of balloons on the Friday night due to the windy and wet weather; this then prevented any balloon activity until the Saturday night. We have always been welcome at the local airfield so we took a drive up there. The star attraction this year was Stampe SV-4C F-BCGS whose owner lives between Scotland and France.

The weather improved by the Saturday night just in time for the night glow we set up G-SNAX and it performed very well in the glow after being stuck in its bag for the past seventeen years. For those of you that don’t know, a night glow is when a balloon or number of tethered balloons light there burners in tune to music.

Sunday was declared flyable so about ten balloons flew over the local countryside; we also flew on the Sunday night. Our pilot found an interesting place to land, on the helipad of a local lorry company who possibly owned two R44s, unfortunately the hangar was locked up, project for next year! The odd few really keen pilots flew again on the Monday morning. We decided a rest was needed before the long drive south.

The first stop on the Monday became the only stop due to the pleasure of having to drive on the A1.

First stop at East Fortune was the microlight school where a good look around was allowed, unfortunately only the two microlight hangars were open, and these just contained rows of flex wing microlights. The middle hangar with the based none flex wings is a private hangar and was unfortunately closed.

Over at the museum I had tried to organise a visit to see the stored exhibits but was told the store is open but you can only see what is at the front! Shame they couldn’t of organised a walkway from the front to the back of the hangar! Hopefully when the two closed exhibition hangars are refurbished and open the stored aircraft will be back on full display.

The two hangars that are open are quite well laid out with one full of a number of fighter aircraft and the other dedicated as a mausoleum to Concord G-BOAA. The butchered 707 front end from Cosford is presented in one corner along with a couple of jetstreams.

Outside there were three fighters a Bucanneer, Jaguar and a Phantom. A Vulcan bomber XM597 sits in another corner.

The museum has a couple of nice airliners in the shape of ex Dan Air Comet 4C which you can walk around and an ex British Airways BAC 1-11 which also escaped the axe at Cosford. Twin Pioner

G-BBVF is also outside and looks in reasonable condition apart from the need for a good polish.

Eshott was planned as the final stop but the bank holiday traffic cancelled that for another day.