Llangollen Hot Air Balloon Festival round-up

THE sky above the Dee Valley filled with a barrage of colour as 14 hot air balloons took off at day break yesterday.

The mass ascent provided a spectacular climax to the highly successful Llangollen Hot Air Balloon Festival.

David Green, whose company Xuberance Events, organises the festival was delighted at the fitting airborne finale.

During the weekend, daring stunts from the James Bond blockbuster Casino Royale were recreated by a team of talented freerunners who all live locally.

The 007 classic opened memorably with a thrilling chase in which Bond (Daniel Craig) pursues an incredibly athletic bad guy, played by free-running master Sebastian Foucan, through a building site, jumping off cranes and down lift shafts.

It introduced the world to the amazing urban acrobatics that is free running, a sport developed by Frenchman Foucan that involves moving across an urban landscape in the most direct and daring way possible.

FR3RUN, young men from Wrexham and Denbighshire aged from 15 to 20, entertained the crowd with a sequence of jumps, spins, twists and acrobatic leaps.

David Green said: “There was a fantastic crowd this year which gave the whole event a brilliant atmosphere and loads to do.

“The model hot air balloon festival, which is the biggest in the UK, inside the pavilion was a huge hit and the free-running display was absolutely amazing.”

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Model stunt planned for Llangollen Hot Air Balloon Festival

A UNIQUE ‘little and large’ stunt is being planned at the Llangollen Hot Air Balloon Festival.

For the first time in the UK, organisers are planning to fly a remote control model balloon inside the super-heated envelope of a full-size balloon.

The idea has been hatched by festival director David Green and Andy Marshall, of Lindstrand Balloons, which organises the show within a show, the UK’s largest indoor model hot-air balloon festival.

It will be a feature of this year’s three-day festival which takes place on the weekend of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 4, 5 and 6, at the Royal International Pavilion.

The pair are warming up for the attempt by flying Andy’s model balloon inside David’s 60,000 cubic foot monster indoors at the pavilion.

Andy said: “That’s a first in itself. It’s never been done indoors but maybe that’s because there isn’t such a good venue for model hot air balloons as the pavilion.

“The roof is big and it’s nice and soft with no sharp bits and nothing to get tangled up in.

“We have to cold-inflate David’s balloon using a giant fan and then get mine up inside it and once it’s in there should be plenty of space for it to fly about in.”

David said: “It should look fantastic and will make for some amazing pictures.

“It will be tricky recreating it outdoors at the show with the high temperatures involved with a normal inflation and the need for absolute calm with no wind at all but if we can we’ll go for it.

“We should be able to switch the burners off for three or four minutes and that should give us time to get the model balloon in there and fly it about.

“It will still be very hot and we may have to look at some way of protecting the model balloon.”

The festival itself is Wales’s biggest hot-air balloon event and the model festival is the biggest in the UK with over 24 balloons taking part, including the one featured in a recent Tesco TV advert.

“It was shot in such a way that it looked full size but it was actually quite a small model,” said Andy:

“Model balloons can be up to 12 feet high so they’re quite substantial.”

The festival will open at 6pm on Friday night when, weather permitting, over 25 balloons will launch, and then it’s party time until 11pm with an outside stage featuring live music.

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