Festival International de Ballons

Château-d'Œx is a narrow alpine valley that happens to be one of the best places in Europe to fly a balloon in winter, which is why a village of a few thousand people hosts an international festival in the coldest month of the year. The calendar has the summer ones.

Its place in ballooning history is fixed. The first non-stop flight around the world lifted off from this valley in March 1999 and came down in the Egyptian desert nearly three weeks later, and the launch site was chosen for the same reasons the festival is here: sheltered ground, predictable morning air, and a mountain wall that does the navigating for you.

Winter flying is a different discipline rather than a colder version of the summer kind. Cold air is dense, so a balloon lifts more for the same burn, and the valley wind follows the terrain instead of the weather map. Pilots come for that, which is why the field is international out of proportion to the size of the village.

The event started at the end of the 1970s with a dozen balloons and a tourist office, and has kept the shape of a village festival: the launch field is walking distance from the station, the programme runs in the middle of the day rather than at dawn, and the whole valley is the venue.

It falls in the middle of the ski season, which is the practical constraint. Accommodation in the village is booked long in advance and priced accordingly, and most visitors who are not skiing come up for the day on the train from Montreux.

The village keeps the connection year-round rather than for one week. There is a permanent exhibition about ballooning in the valley, the record flights that started here are part of how the place presents itself, and the festival is the annual expression of that rather than an event brought in from outside. For a settlement this size, it is the largest thing that happens all year.