Fylde Kite Festival 2003

St Annes Beach - 21st & 22nd June 2003

I had been wanting to visit the Fylde Kite Festival for a couple of years, but it always fell when I was away. However this year my holidays and the festival dates didn't coincide.

On the Saturday afternoon myself and my family turned up on the St. Annes sea front to see what was what - there were a number of large static display kites flying nicely from the arena, with a number of different kite traders set up in the car park and a good number of people either watching the fun, or flying their own kites (outside the arena area). Further out on the large beach there were a few traction kites in evidence (although no boards or buggies since these are still banned at St. Annes). I setup the custom Revolution & Deca near the arena and had a good flying session on these, although care had to be taken to avoid line tangles with other flyers (especially children with single line kites) or just colliding with the flyers themselves. The wind gradually faded during the course of the afternoon which caused (I think) some problems for some of the displays (certainly did for me!). In the arena itself I watched Graham Lockwood performing with three dual line kites - one for each hand, and one for his waist - very impressive! And outside I was very taken by people flying single line fighter kites - the level of control possible with these little things was fantastic, definitely something I will be looking into later on....

On the Sunday we woke to find a much stronger wind, so leaving the family behind for I lie in, I hurried back over to St. Annes to have a session on the beach with the Raptor II before the festival got underway. However this was not to be, since there was a Marathon being run.... and the main sea front road (and of course all access roads) were closed. This meant it was extremely difficult to find where to park in reasonable distance to the festival site, so when I did arrived (more than a little bit stressed!) the program had already started, and the beach was getting busy again. And as the Evolver pair (the Robertshaw brothers) were performing I stayed and watched. I think this was the best part of the whole weekend - the level of control they had in both dual and quad line flying was amazing. I realized that in comparison I am still at a very basic level! With the dual line pair flying it was a fantastic mix of ballet with radical freestyle tricks thrown in - it was almost as much fun watching the brothers and the perfect timing between them, as it was watching the kites. Next we were treated to a demonstration of precise Revolution flying - usual tricks at first, landing the Revolution on the head of the commentator, bringing the kite behind him so that he was standing in-between the lines and banging his back - all under perfect control. Watching the performance of the Revolution to music was again astounding - taking the timing from the music tempo was perfect. Something for me to practice at then.......... I moved on to having a fly of the Revolution myself, but against what I had just seen it was definitely amateur, basic stuff - but I had fun anyway! I had also purchased the Revolution 1.5 Super Leading Edge Spar (SLE) set from one of the traders so I quickly fitted them to my custom Revolution (which had the original, and thinner, EXP spars) and had a go. It did make a big improvement on the performance - but still no match for the experts. Sunday also saw a children's kite making workshop, so there were Kites in the sky hundreds (at least that is what it felt like) of single line sledge kites around. It did make it, er, challenging to fly and avoid these, but it was great seeing the children enjoying flying, and it was impressive seeing all these kites in the sky.

So a good couple of days - spoke with a number of nice people (about kites of course!), saw some fantastic flying (especially Evolver), some fantastic kites, and even had a great time flying a couple of my own kites. No rain, good winds, and lots of happy people (including me)......