Cleethorpes Kite Festival 2006

Cleethorpes Beach - 13th May 2006

....I woke up on the Saturday to a brilliant blue sky, 20 degrees, and a perfect wind. Driving over to Cleethorpes was a pleasure with no traffic or other hold ups, only stopping for the best tasting coffee at the services on the M18/M180. Setting my beach shelter up on the brilliant golden Cleethorpes sands and flying my Revolution in the perfect 12mph on shore wind, entertaining the crowds of sight seers and holiday makers with my prowess at quad line flying. At the end of the glorious day I left the beach to claps and cheers from the crowds and fellow kiters alike and then....

I woke up. At 6:30am to the damn cat (who isn't even ours) crying at the back door. She was crying because it was cold, grey, wet and deeply miserable and she wanted to be inside. Checking (again) the on line weather forecast revealed that it had got worse since the last time I had checked. Now it was rain forecast for most of the day. At least it wasn't raining too heavily. I packed the car, and drove off to Cleethorpes. The heavy rain started around, er, Sheffield and lasted to, er, Cleethorpes.

I arrived at the beach and parked up in the public car park again because yet again I hadn't got round to asking for the official car park pass. I'm sure the parking has gone up since last year - now £5.00 for the day. Lugged all the kites and stuff out went to register to find the pre festival fliers meeting in progress. Feeling rather self conscious (like I was an impostor or something) I hung on the fringes then registered (yet again getting one of those silly badges that never seems to stay attached to my clothing). Put up the shelter on the slightly-less-than-golden sands and got out the Custom Revolution 1.5 SLE and started flying. After a very short while the rain started. And a short while after that the heavy rain started. Stopping to put on the full set of water proofs and to put the kite bag and rucksack inside black plastic bags (I came prepared for this you see), I went out again to see how well I could fly in the rain. Which was surprisingly well as it turned out. Pausing now and then to swap between the Revolution and the Papillon and the Freevol LX I was having fun flying to the crowds watching. Eventually it occurred to me that there was no-one watching from the promenade as everyone sensible was under shelter. And there was no-one else on the beach - all the other fliers were taking shelter. At least I had plenty of room......

Towards lunchtime the rain eased and the other fliers came out - loads of single line kites were launched, and since there were invited fliers from other countries there were some interesting kites up (I liked the Japanese bird kites, and the big Trilobites inflatable kites). The Indian fighter kite chap, Stafford Wallace, was in attendance and was flying his fighter kite well over the houses across the road from the promenade - whilst retaining perfect control (Stafford is a nice chap by the way - I spoke to him about getting into fighters - been on my kite 'todo' list for a year or two now). George Webster was doing his commentating as usual and informing the public of what was going on.

When I went to get my sandwiches from the bin liner protected rucksack I quickly found that this had been a daft idea since the shelter had leaked (I knew it would) and the water had pooled on the ground sheet and found it's way into the bin liners. All the kites were soaked along with the rucksack. Must buy a better beach shelter I think....

Anyway I tried flying the Revolution stack, but that didn't work too well as both kites were heavy with the water and the extra sticky Cleethorpes sand so I flew the Freedom 2000 (first public outing) - and it flew very well actually. I also spent some time with the Airbra - I always forget this is a nice kite to fly (even if it doesn't have the radical edge the real Airbow has). A chap next to me flew a very nice home made blue Synergy Deca A1 landing it on the sea wall and doing the usual quad line things.

Camera manDuring the afternoon I noticed that there was a small camera team in attendance, chaperoned by one of the NE Lincs council people. They seemed to be interviewing and filming some of the fliers. I noticed that the camera man filmed the Airbra a little bit and then they walked past me a chap spoke to me about the kite flying. Thinking he was just another flyer I explained and offered him ago. Turned out he was the chap doing the pieces to camera and wanted to be filmed trying to fly the Airbra. I honestly have no idea who they were, or what they were filming for. Perhaps I should have asked.

During the afternoon the sky became filled with kites of all different shapes and colours, I spoke to a number of other fliers and even managed (on my third attempt) to get a cup of coffee! Kelvin kindly offered me a go on his beautiful single line Papillon, I even managed to keep it under some kind of control! Finally as the beach cleared of fliers I rounded the day off with a quick blast on the Benson Gemini. Afterwards looking through the traders stands I came across some of Stafford's fighter kites including flying line. So for the sum of £8.00 I now have a genuine Stafford Wallace fighter kite. Very much looking forward to learning how to fly these wonderful kites..

An uneventful trip back home, followed by attempting to dry and de-sand 10 kites and a beach shelter (that took ages on the Sunday - the Cleethorpes sand just gets everywhere).

All in all a good, if wet, day.

Things learnt at Cleethorpes 2006

You can fly kites in the rain.
Only slightly mad people fly kites in the rain.
Cheap beach shelters aren't water tight.
That no matter what precautions you take to keep your stuff dry, water will always find away to get in.
That it is possible to fly kites at a festival and not break a spar.