Bristol International Balloon Fiesta

The fiesta flies from a hillside estate on the edge of the city, which is unusual: most events of this size need an airfield, and Bristol has a park with a slope. The slope is why the mass ascent is worth watching from the ground rather than from above — see the rest of the calendar for how it sits against the others.

Free entry is not a marketing decision, it is written into how the event is constituted, and it has held for almost fifty years against costs that have not. Everything that is charged for — a grandstand seat, a car park space, a tethered ride — is charged for so that the field itself does not have to be.

The programme is built around two ascents a day and neither is guaranteed. Wind at ground level and wind two hundred metres up have to agree, and when they do not the launch is called off within the hour. Regulars treat the schedule as a list of chances rather than a list of events, and plan for more than one morning.

The Nightglow is the fixed point. Balloons stay tethered and burn to a soundtrack, which means it happens in weather that would ground the ascent, and it is the part of the week most likely to run as printed.

The fiesta does not sell flights. Passenger balloons in the ascent belong to operators who fly the Avon valley the rest of the year, and the event names them without publishing what they charge. Anyone who wants to be in the air rather than under it books directly, and books early: fiesta week is their busiest of the year.

The fiesta is in Bristol because the industry was. The city has been the centre of British balloon manufacturing since the movement restarted in the 1960s, and the event grew out of that rather than out of tourism — which is why an English city with unremarkable flying weather hosts the best-known fiesta in Europe, and why the field has always had more working pilots on it than a spectator event would normally attract.