Joining the UK’s hot air-ballooning champion for a flight above the Wyre Forest
It’s a sleepy Sunday morning in Cookley. The sun is crawling its way up over the distant banks and the grass is still wet with dew. It’s early, maybe too early.
But according to the UK’s hot air-ballooning champion Dominic Bareford, rising at 5am is what it takes if you want to make it to the top.
I'm here to go up, up and away in a hot air balloon, and it's clear from Bareford's haste that this is a serious business.
As we prepare for take-off, a group of 15 people are discussing numbers and times that make no sense to me.
Bareford’s crew, a group of three young men, introduce themselves and before I know it I’m ushered into a red transit van to head for Clee Hall Lodge’s highest point, where the crew start to unload the gear.
The first thing I notice is how small the wicker basket is. The wicker, Bareford tells me, is the most durable of materials - it’s flexibility makes landings easier.
Whilst unpacking the crew share tales of intense landings and trips to Europe.
In the week prior to our adventure, the team were in France. Mitch, one of Bareford’s crew, tells me there were 50 balloons in the air, a hog roast, music, and a Red Bull tent the team raided for the trip home the next day.
But the racket from the giant metal fan used to start pumping air into the balloon soon drowns out our conversation and I wait nervously.
The giant yellow and blue balloon dwarfs us. It’s in line with five others, readily assembled and awaiting order for lift off.
I climb awkwardly into the basket. Inside there is even less room than it seemed and with two of us, it’s cramped.
A small wooden desk attached to the side of the basket holds an Acer laptop and Garmin GPS.
On the screen a laid out map illustrates the route ahead. The lift off is smooth and steady, and as we climb the burner roars and the view I’d held of the Wyre Forest for the majority of my 24 years alive is all at once obliterated.
Houses become brown squares. People disappear into the vastness of the countryside.
In between the crunch of the walkie-talkie and the scream of the burner there’s something you rarely get on the ground. Something it feels only the sky can offer - an eerie quiet.
Pilot Bareford, 24, has been doing this for as long as he can remember.
His father has been in the business of flying hot-air balloons for over 40 years.
But Bareford has only been actively competing for the last five years. It’s taken him some places, too. He talks of France, Spain, Lithuania, Poland, Luxembourg, Germany, America, Japan last year and plans for Australia later this year. The Americans, he says, are a lot more tolerant of flying and landing.
He’s completed more than a 100 flights this year, and in Cambridgeshire last year, he became the UK’s hot-air ballooning champion. But how does one become a champion in such a niche sport?
“Mostly it just comes with flying.” He tells me.
“Once you start to fly on your own you’ll notice these things, It’s just a continual progression, I never stop learning.”
A normal morning flight will be set up of three to five competition tasks and some of them will be targets set by the judges where everyone’s going for the same place.
Once in the air all bets are off, it’s a highly competitive arena in which every pilot must accrue as many points as possible by accurately dropping streamers onto the marker.
Mitch, Max and Ronnie follow Bareford’s path, marking his drop off points with an X on the ground.
The pilot must drop to a sensible height and throw his marker as close to the spot as possible. It requires a superb sense of control and judgment.
“Sherbert to red van, Sherbert to red van.” Over the radio Bareford and his crew share banter, but also point each other in the right direction.
“Don’t mind me spitting.” Bareford says, leaning over the edge of the basket, “It’s to test the direction of the wind.”
The walkie-talkie crackles: “Wind towards the ground is going towards zero-zero-two.”
Bareford continues: “It’s all based on the accuracy of the hot-air balloon pilot, so you’re using the different levels at different heights to steer the balloon towards targets.
“You can control the altitude very accurately by using the burners to go up and allowing the balloon to cool to go down, you can control height very accurately normally to within a few feet.
“The purpose of the championships is to determine the UK national hot-air ballooning champion and also to determine the team that will represent the UK in events abroad, the European championships and the world championships next year in Austria.
“This sport really takes you everywhere, there are always balloon events all over the place."
Bareford and his team are living proof that there is more to hot air ballooning than drifting aimlessly through the sky.