FlexiWallop 2 Kite Festival 2006

Middle Wallop, Hampshire - 26th-29th May 2005

My second Wallop! At least I would know what to expect!

Friday 26th May

I had arranged a lift with a couple of friends from Sheffield Kite Fliers, however this meant we would have to put three people's kites, tents, food, and drink into the same car. No matter how I reorganized my gear in the dinning room it appeared to be a huge mountain for one person. I think my family were looking forward to seeing how exactly it was going to get packed!

Anyway I left work early, arrived home to find Paul and Darren looking at the equipment mountain with bemused expressions - however Darren managed to get it all into his nice and large Volvo - leaving just enough space for me to fit in the back. And we were off! We met up with Phil and Andy at the Chively services "down south" - and noticed a few other fellow Wallopers (easy: almost always had buggys and/or boards strapped in strange places to the car). Excitement started to mount once we picked up the 'Middle Wallop' sign posts - and leading to a really geeky tech conversation between comparisons of the Sat Nav systems between Paul (Darren's car/Sat Nav) and Andy (Phil's car/Sat Nav) comparing the exact time remaining.....

We arrived at Middle Wallop at around 5:00pm - too early to enter, but the orgniaisers let us wait in the Museum car park - where we met up with Jon who had arrived early as well. Once the organizers were happy we were all let it - and we quickly set up the SKF camp at the agreed location. After a while we had most of the tents up and were eyeing up the (empty) field, looking forward to the days ahead.

Although traction kiting wasn't allowed some people were static flying by the side of the track - I of course got out the Revolution and had an opening fly. As the light was fading I swapped over to the Stealth Revolution my specially adapted night flying Revolution - to be told by a marshall not to fly as it wasn't allowed (!). Slightly disappointed I put it away - but thought I would try latter when it was fully dark and if others were flying. And later on I did indeed fly again with a full complement of LED flashing lights and glow sticks - and very nice it was too. Over at the beer tent I could hear to 'initiation' of some Wallop first timers - which seemed to involve feeding cake to be person next to them. It sounded very messy but (like the event itself) very good natured. I wandered over at the end just in time to watch the organizers make a big fuss of the 9 year old daughter of some of the fliers

Saturday 27th May

After the usual rowdy first night (don't go to Wallop to catch up with sleep.... or indeed go to bed early) everyone was up bright and early to get onto the traction field when it opened at 9:00am. Everyone but us. Since I had traveled down in someone else's car I had to wait until he was up before I could get the traction kite stuff out and join the party. Eventually Paul had to wake Darren up and get the keys. Since Paul had just got himself a nice shiny Peter Lynn Venom II we helped him setup the kite and made sure he was OK with it. Once that was done it was time to head out into the crowds. And boy was it busy - lots and lots of people on boards and buggys. People like me - strictly recreational, speed people - going as fast as they could, radical people - jumping as high as they could. All sharing the same large space. Of course accidents happen - but due to the (general) chilled feel of Wallop apologies were made and people just carried on. Certainly I had to suddenly change direction more than a few times to avoid a collision.

One incident I clearly remember (and one that doesn't show me in a good light) is whilst in the middle of the field I crashed the kite - in fact managed to bowtie it. So I stopped, pegged the kite, and went to sort it out. Whilst I stopped I thought to myself I could have a quick drink and mars bar. So I did. At which point one of the Marshalls quickly wandered over to tell me to either get going or back my kite away. I (in all innocence - I wasn't trying to be clever of anything) said I thought I could stop for 5 minutes before I had to pack away. This did not go down well and he pointed out to me (rightly) that I was stopped in the middle of the field ("oh yeah... hadn't thought of that...."). I got the feeling he wasn't best pleased by me answering back. Anyway I quickly launched the kite and got back in the buggy but I noticed Mr. Marshall watching me. With that father in law expression. Which make me nervous. Which of course made me ditch the kite fantastically and fall out of the buggy. And so I try again. With Mr. Marshall still watching me (looking even more like a father in law). And I do exactly the same again. So for the third time I launch and slowly buggy away and put as much space between me and him as I could! After that things got better.....

As is my custom I alternated traction sessions with trick session, so the Revolutions and deltas got a good work out as well.

In the afternoon we had a nice prolonged rain shower which obviously cleared the field. At the time I had just been doing some Revolution flying adn was talking to another flyer, so I got really cold and soaked. However Once the rain eased off I got the C-Quad 3.2 out and had fantastic time on a nearly empty field. I think it was the first time I've ever tried to go as fast as I could in the buggy! Nice looooong slides when turning but great fun.

In the evening there was an important meeting with the BBC / Flexifoil about the future of the BBC as an entity - this was useful to hear and gave some good food for thought about the direction of kiting and the challenges of traction kiting in particular.

After that there was more night flying with the stealth Revolution 1.5 (loading with lots of lights and glow sticks). Eventually (at about 1:00am) I decided to go to bed - and so went to the porta loos, crept back to the tent so as not to wake the other Sheffielders, had just got into my tent when I heard Paul next to my tent, to be followed by a rowdy "Happy Birthday to you" being sung in beautiful (!) harmony all around me. Yes it was now my 38th birthday and all the Sheffielders had just come back from the beer tent (they werent asleep in their tents after all!). And so at 1:30am in the morning we were all standing around outside chatting. Jon gave another fire juggling demonstration - which as he was, shall we say, slight worse for wear was 'interesting' to watch. No harm to him or anyone else thankfully.

Sunday 28th May

Another day with lots of wind, buggying, kites, buggying, kites, and buggying. But without the rain on Saturday. During the course of the afternoon I noticed that some people had stacked 2 Peter Lynn Venoms together. But not to be outdone the SKF lot had decided to try and stack 3 Venoms. I arrived to find Ben (who was going to fly the monster) directing Jon, Paul, Dave and others. So we spent a happy couple of hours building the stack and watching Ben, Jon and others flying the stack. Using 3 kites didn't work well - the third and smallest didn't want to inflate correctly so this was removed and Ben & Jon went boarding with the 2 stack.

I went off buggying again and found (for me) the perfect spot - right at the end of the runway - about as far as you can go away from the buildings. The wind direction was great - long,long runs towards the base, and long, long runs back to the end. Fantastic. It was about this time I realized why this part of the field was quiet - all the photographers were elsewhere, and so all the cool dudes were flying near the photographer. So non-cool dudes (like me) could do our stuff and enjoy ourselves without getting in the way of the cool duds being photographed. A perfect situation.

There was the film competition shown on a outdoor giant inflatable screen with some excellent kiting videos - I was pleased to note that the one I prefered, Team Couch Posse, actually won. But I must admit not to watching all the video.

Monday 29th May

The last day. We had been threatened the day before that they wouldn't open the traction field until we had done a walk across the field to collect litter blown from the campsite. So I and a good few others spent our early Monday walking from one end of the field to the other and actually it was very calming and pleasant listening to the birds and the sound of the wind. I personally didn't find much litter but it did create a good impression to the military. With that out of the way the field was opened again. Hooray!

And again it was a mix of buggying, trick kiting, buggying, kiting etc. The weather today was much more gusty - had to move down to the Airea Raptor II 2.5, and was plenty powered up for my tastes. At one point in the afternoon I had to swerve to avoid a buggier, who had had to swerve to avoid a boarder. This caused me to ditch the kite, and the Raptor being a race kite meant I had to undo the nice bow-tie. The buggier, upon realizing I has struggling to sort the kite out came back to apologize and see if I was OK (which I was). Whilst we were talking a squall hit which would have been interesting if our kites had been up (talking to some friends later it actually HAD been interesting....)! As the day wore on we realized it was time to pack up and go - so with one last session it was time to go.

The camp was quickly struck, the car loaded and off back to Sheffield (and showers). All in all a great weekend - the only regrets were really about the members of SKF who weren't feeling well for the weekend. Roll on Flexi Wallop3.