Beverley Spring Kite Festival 2006

Beverley Race Course, 30th April 2006

Well this was my first visit to both Beverley itself and the Beverley kite festival and I was very much looking forward to seeing somewhere new. From reading about the event in the MKF Newsletter and other places I knew there would be other 'attractions' at the event - attractions such as a car boot sale, plants and crafts. I therefore suggested we make it a family trip - I would go and 'play' with my kites for the day, the others would go and enjoy the 'attractions'! For the preceding week I kept a careful eye on various weather forecasts - early on we got the 12mph and sunny (yay!!) forecast ranging to 2mph rainy (doh!!) forecast. However on the day we actually got 2mph cloudy and cold. At least it wasn't raining.

We all arrived on site at about 10:00am, parked in the public car park in the field across from the race course, and (armed with shelters, kites, food and the like) walked across to the gate to present our MKF membership cards for our free entry. This caused some confusion at the gate with the lady there saying that she didn't know what these were. After a few radio conversations we were finally allowed in. I had been rehearsing my speech about how "we were supposed to get free entry if we were flying" but in the end didn't need to.

So off to the field - because we are MKF members we could use the 'official' flying field (there was another area for other fliers), so we met up with some other MKF fliers and pitched our little beach shelter in the shadow of a couple of MKF mobile homes then went to see what I could fly. And as it was zero wind the answer was of course the Custom Revolution 1.5 SUL - which is more or less the kite I stayed with throughout the day. Given the wind conditions (very low) there were very few kites were flying that morning - a couple of other Revolutions SUL's (I liked the white custom one belonging to a member of Sky Symphony - sorry forgot your name), a couple of low wind deltas and some lighter single line kites. At least I got plenty of space!

During the morning the wind did pick up and also did a 180 degree shift, but at least something was blowing. I tried to fly the Revolution stack a couple of times (that's 2 custom Revolution 1.5 SLE's joined together one behind the other and flown as one) but the wind was a little bit too low for this to work well. Sky Symphony did an excellent display with up to five fliers - even more remarkable was the lack of wind.

The afternoon remained cold, but with enough wind so that most of the single line kites filled the sky and of course all the usual multi line kites as well. I flew a few other kites during the afternoon: the Synergy Deca 1 (which my daughter had fun flying - and crashing - as well) and the old Prism Illusion (which was great fun until I snapped the spine). Gilli from MKF made us a very welcome cup of tea - I honestly don't think we would have made it through the afternoon without it! Thanks Gilli..... I really liked the white single line kite that looked like three box kites attached with long yellow and orange tails - that was a beautiful kite - no idea to what it was (I should have asked someone of course.....).

Final thoughts?

I enjoyed this festival - it's a pity the wind was low but the 'official' flying site was large and well thought out. More than enough room for all to fly without getting in each others way. The only problem was that members of the public would find it very difficult to actually see what was going on in the 'official' field since fliers caravans were packed along the sides in front of where people could watch the field.

My wife ended up buying some garden plants from the plant sale, my daughter yet more soft toys from the car boot sale, and me buying nothing at all (too busy flying to go and look).