Calke Abbey Kite Day 2005

Calke Abbey, Derbyshire 17/04/05

The Calke Abbey Kite Day had been advertised in the Midland Kite Flier magazine for a couple of issues, along with calls to have more people attending MKF events. Since I had never been to Calke Abbey before, it's fairly close to Sheffield, and I'm one of these people who doesn't attend many MKF events I decided I would go and visit - this time along with my family who were keen on seeing Calke Abbey itself.

The weather forecast for the weekend was rather poor with heavy rain expected in the afternoon so we decided to go as early as we could in order to enjoy the better weather. The journey was uneventful - punctuated by the usual cries of "Are we nearly there yet?" from the children in the back and complaints about how far it is (we also get complaints about never going anywhere new so we can't win) along with listening to Alice in Wonderland - what was Lewis Carroll on when he wrote that?

Anyway we arrived at Calke in beautiful April sunshine at about 10:30, I went & introduced myself to the MKF people at the stand to be welcomed and told I could fly anywhere in the park (i.e. the non-arena part of the field). I set up the shelter and got out the Custom Revolution 1.5 SLE to see how the wind was feeling - a bit gusty and variable direction, but OK (certainly better than my usual fare in Sheffield). In the arena the spiky ball things were happily bouncing along the ground, and various inflatable kites were in the sky - like the divers. Behind me the park began to fill up with lots of people with different kites - some families just out for the day with simple sledge kites they had made in one of the tents, others like me with lots of kites.

Over the course of the morning the children discovered the hollow tree nearby and spent ages playing there, my wife went off to look around the park a bit, and I flew some kites. After flying the Revolution I got out the Freevol LX which drew various MKF people over to look at "this strange kite" and then it was time for lunch. Being (I hope!) a responsible kite flier I didn't want to leave out the Revolution and the Freevol for people to trip over, so I quickly wrapped the lines around the handles and moved the kites back to the shelter. After lunch I felt a bit more Freevol flying was called for so I put the lines back out - to find that somehow they had knotted themselves into a single thick braid, nearly all the way from the handles to the kite! A good few minutes trying to sort out the mess didn't result in much progress so that is now on my kite "to do" list back home.

Over the afternoon I flew the Revolution again - this time to find a couple of young boys were intent on having a game of football around me. No matter where I moved they seemed to be around me. Of course eventually I didn't see one of them run from behind and he got caught by the Revolution lines. Luckily the kite wasn't powered up and no harm was done. I asked them to try and avoid me and I would try to avoid them - never saw them again after that! After that I got out the Custom Synergy Deca which lasted about - oh - 30 seconds before the main central spar snapped (note to self: must use that new wind meter before flying a kite). Putting that away I got out the Airbra - a kite I haven't exactly flown much since making it - and do you know what? I have an excellent time with it (even if one of the stand off spars was broken - something I had forgotten about) - I had to watch the gusts of wind that the kite didn't get carried away, but I found it a very nice to fly and even once or twice managed to do some slack line tricks with it (which is what the real Airbow is good at). Eventually one of the vertical spars poked through the dacron pocket, so it looks like I need to work out a different way of attaching the spars to the sail (along with replacing that standoff).

The wind was picking up throughout the course of the day as the sky clouded over - so I ended up flying the Custom Vented Revolution 1.5 SLE. By this time the field was beginning to thin out of fliers and the MKF members were taking down the display kites in the arena. Whilst waiting for my wife to return from a visit to the gardens I flew the Decathlon Triboard with my youngest child and, being a careful kite flier, was very aware of a small family group off on the right. So taking hold of youngest hands whilst flying I tried to move the kite over to the left so it was out of harms way. This, of course, ended with me crashing the kite straight onto the family group. If you are reading this I'm really sorry - I was trying to avoid you honest!

The day ended with a quick flight of the Flexifoil Fury to the pitter-patter sound of light rain falling and the hour drive back to Sheffield (with more Alice in Wonderland).

All in all an excellent day out - I had some good flying, some good chats with other fliers, the children discovered a hollow tree, and my wife enjoyed visiting the hall itself. What more could we want? (apart from two broken spars, a line tangle and a kite crashed on people of course)