A glider flight experience 11 June 2025

Not far from York, on the outskirts of North York Moors, there is a gliding club. We often visit the area. For my birthday this year I got a present - a glider flight. Everything worked out, we had good weather and gentle breeze. The system works like this: you book a flight, it get cancelled because of weather conditions, you book again and hope it works out.

We arrived at the airfield near White Horse at the right hour. They were already waiting for us. We watched the safety briefing video, filled in the forms and were driven by car across the whole airfield to the launch site. Its location depends on the direction of the wind. Almost all of the club members are volunteers. Each flight involves 4-5 people: the glider pilot, the plane pilot, two more people hook the glider to the plane and supervise the take-off and landing (flight control centre).

I was given a parachute and shown which handle to pull. They told me how to get in and out of the cabin.

Final preparations before take-off.

Ready to go. The red plane will pull us along.

We took off. We were in the air for about 40-45 minutes. We detached from the aerotow at 3000 feet above the ground (about 1 km). I was even allowed to steer up and down and turn left and right (the pilot had duplicate controls).

I was not allowed to take a camera with me, only my mobile phone. But I only had time to look around. The left photo shows my control panel at take-off. A blue string is glued to the windscreen to show the wind direction.

White Horse.	Control panel at landing.

We are about to land.

I can relax now. The instructor said that most gliding club members are aviation enthusiasts and ex-pilots (military and civilian). It seems that once people get into flying, they can't imagine life without the sky.

Hot air balloon flight 29 June 2025

A few years ago we were given a voucher for a hot air balloon flight in St Petersburg, but we couldn't use it straight away and it expired. We then decided to have the experience locally. It turned out that York is a good place for hot air ballooning. We had people in our team from as far away as Manchester and Grimsby. Ballooning requires perfect weather: very little wind. We had only had to reschedule our flight three times, and some in our group had been rescheduled 12 times, so we were very good at guessing the weather. We met our guide at the Racecourse at 5.30am, just 15 minutes from home by bike.

The red line shows our track. Shift-click the track link to open it in nakarte.me.

The trailer carries the basket, the balloon itself, two blowers and gas cylinders.

The basket has already been unloaded onto the ground. The balloon fits in this bag.

There were thirteen of us in the group plus the pilot. We were given a safety briefing and set to work. The first thing we had to do was to spread the balloon on the ground.

Victor is in charge of the blower. There are two of them in total, one on each side of the basket.

At first, the balloon is inflated with cold air.

Our pilot Oliver is spreading the ropes inside the balloon.

This balloon was made in the Czech Republic. The colours are based on the children's book about Elmer the Patchwork Elephant.

When the balloon is sufficiently inflated, the burners are switched on.

The balloon is still attached to the car and shouldn't go anywhere yet.	We took off.

York Minster can be seen in the distance, with allotments close by on the left and rows of terraced houses further on.

The Racecourse.

The footbridge over the River Ouse. Rowntree Park is on the right .

To the left of the blue tennis courts is the school all our kids went to.

Our house and university campus.

The East Campus of the University, the sports complex and in the rightmost part, the velodrome.

We flew out of town. There was another balloon following us. The pilot cannot control the direction of travel, he only adjusts the altitude by heating the air.

It's very beautiful down there. A strange patchy field below us.

It's hard to tell from above what is planted in this field, but everything is very neat and green.	Our pilot Oliver at work.

We're flying over Elvington airfield. The red balloon can't catch up with us.

An aircraft museum near the airfield.

Two trees.

The landing was quite soft. We landed in a farmer's field about 10 kilometres from York. Oliver opened the valves at the very top of the balloon and it deflated quickly.

We packed up the balloon and stacked it back into the bag.

At the end we were treated to champagne and driven back to the Racecourse from where we had started 45 minutes earlier.