Fired Up: A View From 1000ft

The evening before our first balloon trip we were walking in Port Meadow when a hot-air balloon loomed up in a blaze of colour, sudden, huge and silent, above the trees.

"Oh wow," said my daughter Livvie. "Tomorrow that'll be us. I can't wait to tell all my friends!"

Inevitably, it absolutely poured the next day. Freak winds ripped across Oxfordshire, cables snapped, lightning flashed and I'm pretty sure that in the middle of it three witches met to hail Macbeth.

Six weeks later we'd risen to the top of the passenger list again and were standing, with our fellow would-be balloonists, in a field. A trailer arrived bearing a big red sack of canvas and what looked like a 16-seater picnic basket. We were all put to spreading out the balloon by Mike, the pilot. My wife Kate, Livvie, and our other daughter, Miranda, joined a team of 10 holding on to the mooring rope while two men who had never met before were asked to hold the mouth of the balloon open so Mike could blow air in with a diesel-powered fan.

Unfortunately, just this first step took 40 minutes as the fan kept flooding and then the wind picked up sufficiently to open the top valve a couple of times, letting all the air out. From where Kate and the daughters were grappling with the mooring rope our transport of delight looked like a giant red whale, dying slowly and repeatedly at the end of a rope harpoon.

I had not realised so much work was involved. The brochure had said we were encouraged to help get the balloon airborne, but all 16 of us were basically ground crew for the first hour of this trip. The two men who were holding the balloon open became such good friends they were exchanging phone numbers by the time the damn thing was up. But up, to my great surprise, it suddenly was and I saw Miranda and Livvie leading the charge of rope-pullers running to the giant basket as if this were the last balloon out of occupied France.

Mike sent noisy sheets of fire up into the balloon's great cavity using four flame-throwers and we drifted alarmingly across the grass towards parked cars. Mike shouted to bystanders to push us away from the vehicles and told everyone to get down below the lip of the basket. I thought this meant we were about to capsize but when he told us to stand up again we were in the air, spires were rising into view beyond the ice rink and people on the ground were cheering. My wife burst into tears.

After all that preparation and anxiety the journey was slow and gracious as we were borne westwards across Port Meadow and away from Oxford, which had never looked lovelier or more compact than from 1,000 feet. Unlike any other form of flying, this truly felt effortless and the silence was serene - except when it was broken by the roar of the burners or the chatter of Livvie, who never stopped telling us what she could see or complaining that she couldn't see anything at all.

We watched graceful meander loops pass by below. We waved to villagers and startled sheep who bleated and filed, in a surprisingly ordered way, out of any field we passed over. We saw the foundation outlines of buildings long since demolished. We drifted low over a reservoir but high enough to see flocks of birds flying in formation below us - a sight I shall not forget - and passed slowly over a sewage works, a sight I'd happily forgo.

All too soon I realised that Mike was pondering where to land. There are certain kinds of men who like to sit with the driver on a coach or spend an entire train journey talking to the guard. In our group this role had been seized by the two guys who'd met holding the balloon open. Now they had assigned themselves the task of identifying roads below so that Mike could keep his colleague Steve (following us in the trailer) appraised of where we were. They were discussing which fields looked free of livestock, slurry and telephone wires (the triple terrors of balloonists).

"Everyone down!" Mike shouted and we obediently crouched below the edge of the basket, clutching the rope handholds. The flame-throwers roared their last and suddenly we had landed, gracefully and upright, in a pasture.

"Well that wasn't bad," I said, standing up, at which point a gust of air caught the collapsing balloon and we tipped over, to be dragged 40 feet or so through grass and brambles. Cameras, mobile phones and wallets went flying and everyone laughed. That's the kind of landing Brits enjoy.

We rolled up the balloon and loaded the basket. Mike rewarded us with Champagne in silvery flutes and Steve pointed us to the minibus. It took us longer to get back to Oxford by road than our journey by air. Everyone parted friends. There had been just the right level of adversity to bond us.

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