Fylde Kite Festival 2005

St Annes Beach - 18th & 19th June 2005

Saturday 18th June

The family an I left Sheffield at 9:30am with the boot of the car stuffed with various kites, beach things, and the usual stuff we travel with when we go and stay with my parents. Three hours, two traffic jams, and a McDonalds meal later I was parking up on the road by the beach and letting out the excited children for their first visit in 2005 to a beach. Lugging all the various things out of the car and across the sand hills I went to the Flying Circus tent to see if I could get myself an Arena pass (something I said I would do after last year's festival). I was quickly passed from one member of the Flying Circus to another until I got to the pass monitor - once adorned with the pass it was time to setup camp, get out the kites, buckets and spades (for the children), magazine (for my wife), slap on the sun cream and wait for the wind to blow. Which it failed to do in any meaningful way all day.

I had previously checked the forecast on the BBC's weather web site, only 3mph was anticipated for Saturday (and even this seemed a little optimistic at times!). So out came all the lightweight kites - the Custom Revolution 1.5SUL, the Black Deca, the Guildworks Low Wind 333, and even the nearly-but-not-quite-finished 5.4m NasaWing. Given the poor wind conditions most of the large inflatable display kites would not fly, but people were flying (with some effort!) some beautiful custom single line Papillon kites (the ones shaped like Butterflies), along with some other single line kites. Graham Lockwood managed to do his multi-kite flying (where he flies three delta dual line kites at the same time) - goodness knows how he achieved that, but somehow he did! There was even a 45 second altitude sprint (where a single line kite is launched and the one who gets the kite the highest in 45 seconds wins).

I managed to fly the Black Deca (which performed better than expected) and the Custom Revolution 1.5SUL reasonably well on short lines. Later, when the wind picked up slightly, a couple of other fliers got out NasaWings, so I got my nearly finished NasaWing (just the bridles to check and tie off properly). It flew OK, but on the 'proper' traction 30m lines it was a little bit too heavy for the conditions.

At 4:00pm it was time to pack away the kites and head back to the car to go and visit my parent in Blackpool.

Sunday 19th June

This was forecast to be the better day of the two, so I was looking forward to getting to St Annes and having a good fly. Of course the first problem was it clashed with the Blackpool marathon, which meant they had closed the sea front road, which meant finding a parking place on a side road some distance from the arena. This resulted in a long walk to the arena with all the kites, shelter, and things!

I set myself up near the Air Gallery again and decided it was time for the Custom Revolution 1.5 - the newly made one. The wind was perhaps a little too light, but I found I could fly with relative ease. During the course of the morning I flew the Synergy Deca (the real one this time, not my copy), the Kwat, and the Freevol LX. I even had a brief fly with the Snowflake (I did intend to go back to that later on in the day, but forgot in the end).

The wind strengthened during the day, but also shifted nearly 180 degrees - so that instead of facing Blackpool as in first thing in the morning, I ended up facing the pier. This caused some issues with some of the larger display kites - at one stage the tube tails of one were nearly landing in the car park!

I met up with one or two people - including Neil from the Northern Kite Group. I had brought a spare Revolution SLE so that we could try some flying together - this we did and spent a happy half hour flying around the sky before he had to dash off to perform in the arena with his dual line team, Synergy, I then flew a little bit with (I think) Teejay from the North East Kite Fliers. Later upon Neils return he asked if I would do a quick spot with George, the commentator, with the Revolution. This is where you fly the kite around George's head demonstrating a) the courage of George and b) the skill of the flier. Introducing myself to George I was quickly into it - and I have to say I was totally terrified. Partly due to not being able to hear the PA very clearly (therefore not hearing George's instructions) but mainly suddenly aware of the "what happens if this goes wrong?" feeling! It seemed to pass off without incident (or at least without a Revolution wingtip embedded up George's nose or something) and I returned to my usual spot. Later on Teejay mentioned he would have liked to do that spot: I can only say that in future please do - it's just too nerve wracking for me......... Afterwards when packing away the kites I found that one of the bridles on the old red & white Revolution 1.5 had come undone (where the horizontal crosses the vertical) - this would account for it's slightly erratic flying. Sorry Neil!

As usual I enjoyed the Air Gallery display, and this time managed to get a close up of how they are flown. There were more displays from Graham, the Papillons, and another altitude sprint - altogether much easier flying that on Saturday.

As the teddy bear dropping started at 3:00pm it was time for me to go - with a very grey and stormy looking sky, and sun burn on the back of my legs of all places!

The storm didn't make it to Blackpool, but it did of course make it to North Yorkshire causing extensive flooding and it did pass over Sheffield just before we arrived home - leaving no power in the area.....