Posted in Ireland, tagged air, bad, balloon, bit, Deflated, down, fiesta, hot, let, of, schedule, trim, weather on April 12, 2012|
Leave a Comment »
Richie’s sister (Jilly) spotted an advert a few weeks ago for the Trim Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. It was on over the Easter Weekend and we both had Sunday free so decided to go that day. We looked it up online at their website and well, it got us excited. Not only was it in a lovely historic town of Trim (which is a small road trip away), but it was in the grounds of Trim Castle itself. I thought this would make a lovely setting for what we read would be at least 22 balloons inflated over the course of the day with possible ascensions in morning and evening, depending on the weather of course.
The schedule listed on the website, said possible ascension at 7:30am. This meant it would be an early start for us on Easter Sunday. I picked Jilly up at 6:10am. She had the hot chocolate ready in the travel mugs. It took us just over 45 minutes to get to Trim, along winding back roads with pheasants on some stretches, too many to count. It must be mating season.
We arrived in the grounds of Trim Castle at about 7:00am. The town looked deserted, almost like Aliens came and abducted everyone. We parked up and could see the entrance with a lone individual wearing a high vis jacket. He was on the other side of a foot bridge. Save for what he was wearing, he was like a gate keeper or castle guardian. This is what we got, ‘Are you workers?’. ‘No’. ‘Well it’s not open yet, far too early’. ‘The website said things kick off at 7:30’. ‘Well there’s no one here yet and not sure when it will be open today’.
This baffled me a bit. Why have a schedule on the website. We weren’t the only ones that arrived early. It was like our arrival triggered other visitors to appear from other parked cars. We all scratched our heads and went in different directions. Jilly and I thought some breakfast would be good. We headed to the Trim Castle hotel and managed to get a Full Irish and then wandered the empty town, like tourists awake early due to a post travelling time difference. This killed some time and the town is really quite beautiful and has a lot of charm. Eventually at about 8:30 we noticed that some visitors were getting in to the Fiesta grounds. We paid our €10 and asked the person on the ticket office, what the story was with the morning ascension. She said it was unlikely and that it’s not very busy in there.
We proceeded on to the grounds. There were stalls/tents around a large sealed off area with some fair ground amusements and the odd wind sock flew high to signify the wind direction for prospective flights. Judging from these alone, it was unlikely to see any lift off. Since the place seemed so vacant, we toured the grounds and took a few snaps. Then at about 9am, we saw a bit of commotion on the main area. They were starting to fill a balloon. I kind of expected more than one to be filled and this one didn’t even get fully blown up. After 55mins of trying, the conditions just weren’t right for it and it was cancelled and rolled back up. I know it’s not the fault of the organisers or the balloon people themselves but seeing the balloon collapse, made my mood shrink too. I can only blame one person for this. Myself. Of course, the website had the little triple asterisks disclaimer of ***All events and times are subject to change. I should’ve taken more heed of this warning.
A few kites soared, the only things happy to have a wind blowing.
At 10am, we left. We needed some retail therapy so it was off to TK Maxx to raid the rails and under cover a bargain. My mood carried there too. I bought nothing.
I should make it clear that this was only my experience and that the weather would play very heavily on an event like this. Two of my sisters and my brother took their families later in the day and got there at about 3pm. They enjoyed it and got to see two balloons fully inflate.
Read Full Post »
Paddy Clifford 