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| 23/09/2018
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| Splashing and Dashing at Naburn Lock |
(Photo by Elaine of Tim Wilkinson's lovely little Sackville balloon.)
Our annual Naburn Lock splash and dash meet is over and we have had a far better weekend than the weather forecast predicted.
We arrived on Thursday amidst torrential rain, high winds, and black skies - from then on in, the only way was up, and Sunday finished with glorious sunshine!
Sadly Thursday/Friday night's high winds put paid to Emma Briggs tent courtesy of a huge rip - CCTV footage may be published on various sites of Emma trying to salvage her tent whilst not really being dressed for the weather........I will say no more! Emma also decided that the tent was too far damaged to stay so went home.
Friday evening was a bit too breezy for any flying so we socialised instead.
Saturday morning was lovely, and it was flyable - bit a little quick, although not for Adam TooManyNames to take to the sky in his 120. Nice safe landing later and home for breakfast.
Saturday evening also gave us all a great flight with Alex Braund Smith and pu/t Daniel King off in G-OATV, a committee of pilots (John Russon, Derek Grimshaw and Neil Hepworth) in John's gorgeous G-SCFC, another committee of pilots; Tim Wilkinson and Linda C-Clarke in Tim's Sackville G-CIWW, yet another committee of pilots; Adam TMN and Martin Read, flown by Pu/t - Emily Read in Adam's G-BZBL, and finally Mike and Michelle Bellamy (Taylor) in G-BVDB. Mary Bellamy had a bit of a difficult retrieve as she lost everything including her phone charger, and the balloon, so realised the best thing to do was to return to the camp site for a charger and two strong men (well played Mary!) to help carry out over the two locked gates. Everyone came home safe and sound which was the best result. There was also evidence provided that John Russon and co. managed the elusive splash and dash so we had to try and come up with new rules to exclude his attempt in the hope we could keep the trophy in Yorkshire!
We had a mass food frenzy/faith supper with curry and all the trimmings in the Braund Smith awning and finished off with a huge Millie's Cookie with the club initials courtesy of the Barclay Faulkner family - yummy, and thank you!
Sunday morning rolled along with blue skies, and once again Mr TooManyNames set off skyward - doing the pampered pilot thing of arriving at the cold inflated balloon just in time to take over and hot inflate, he will soon forget how to read a map, and pack the balloon away as all pilots seem to do after checking out. (Cue mass pilot retort! :-) )
Anyway, 11am rolled around and the survivors gathered for the quiz marking and prize giving. Not quite the abundance of fantastic and expensive prizes from the sky safari the previous week but the usual worthless crap everyone has come to love. Graham and Wendy Hill won the quiz, and Phil Traviss got the booby prize of a chocolate orange without the chocolate - well we did have to count the pieces to ensure we got the quiz question answer correct! Adam TMN got a packet of Cock Soup for being the bravest pilot (or something similar!!), and Mary was given a marbles game as something else for her to lose this weekend. Derek Grimshaw accepted the Splash and Dash trophy on the Pest from the West (aka John Russon) behalf as his S&D was clearly awesome, in fact Derek described it as the best S&D he had ever seen and as Derek has been there and done that in ballooning, that is praise indeed. Well done Pesty! (and don't forget to clean it this year or we will ban you from winning it again!!!)
The best bit of the weekend has got to go to meeting the three new 'members' - Ollie and Luna, who are Sal and Andy Billany's Sheepdog puppies, and Willow, Kath and Derek Grimshaw's Cavapoo.
Thank you everyone for coming along and here's to the next PRBA meet at Thornton le Dale in a fortnight's time.
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