Climbing into the hamper is not for the elderly or infirm. Fortunately my fellow flyers are very much of the youthful and physically fit variety. For the photo shoot two tall yet incredibly slim young blondes, Vogue model-types who probably ate a blueberry two days ago and are consequently still full, vault into the hamper with agility, though they’re so light they float in. If we need to jettison ballast later (significantly you only jettison ballast on a hydrogen not hot air balloon) then throwing these two models overboard would make no difference whatsoever to our altitude. And I trust there will be no shortage of normal-sized women who would be willing volunteers to toss the models overboard if required.
***
My inaugural balloon ride has started. It is a much noisier experience than I was expecting, the propane burner constantly roared into life by our pilot. We are off the ground, and already I fear we are far too high for me to feel comfortable. I look for the altimeter, only to be told “we haven’t got an altimeter”. It’s OK, these days a laptop screen is the pilot’s altimeter. And it informs me that we’re only five feet off the ground. The basket suddenly judders from side to side. Up, up and a sway - rather than away.
When sufficient levitation has been achieved, it rises surprisingly quickly. At about twelve feet off the ground, I announce that this is quite high enough for me, and that if we can maintain current altitude for the flight duration, I will be absolutely fine with that, thank you very much. But the on-board computer - no, Sadler would not have had that - spins the numbers upwards on the computer’s altimeter. Oh, you have a computer now that does everything, including calculating our speed, height, pressure, etc.
Even at several hundred feet, I can clearly make out my wife waving, then holding a piece of paper, probably checking the insurance documentation and how soon after my demise it’s possible to submit a claim.
After only a few seconds we are high enough to look down at Oxford beneath us, and see the same landmarks and skyline that would still be easily recognised by James Sadler: the hushed college quadrangles, Magdalen Tower, the Radcliffe Camera and Sir Christopher Wren’s imposing Tom Tower entrance gate to Christ Church.
As I glance down appreciatively upon Matthew Arnold’s famous Dreaming Spires I connect with Sadler’s vision; he was the first person ever to see all this from above. Even from this range, I can make out a scholar’s bicycle in Merton Street, rattling timelessly across ancient cobbles. Instantly I catch myself pledging that I will never take for granted being on terra firma again, even if that does involve traversing cobble stones on a bike.
Omnipresent is a wash of background noise, and the terrifyingly loud noise of propane being fired. There are two switches, a high and low, to spit propane flames like an angry dragon. Such noises, like dragons’ roars, just fertilise my fears. Fellow trippers are laughing. How can anyone laugh at a time like this? They have toasted their flight - which means being pre-lashed. And are looking forward to champagne when we land. I’m looking forward to when we land too. In fact, I want to land now.
Once you reach about 1,000 feet the distracting noises of earth start to leave you behind. The low roar of the ring-road disappears, as do the other tell-tale noises of human endeavour. Suddenly you are afforded a prolonged period of one of the regrettably rarest commodities in our world: silence. Since the balloon moves with the wind, we are literally becoming the wind, blending, intermingling with it. So there is no noise to the breeze, no rustle of anything. Such a dangerous feeling of anxiety, mixed incongruously with a total sense of serenity.
Richard Branson has admitted “I got a tremendous sense of joy from being superbly powerless: human chaff, borne who knows where by the wind.” Now I can relate to what he means. Maybe I can risk uncoiling myself from my current foetal position, and take a short peek at the view over the basket’s edge?
Then another noisy dragon’s breath of propane shoots flames inches from my nose. Finally I dare myself to steal the briefest of glimpses over the basket’s side. From this height Oxfordshire resembles a model railway layout. Then my terrified brain orders me to get away from the edge, hooking me back towards the middle of the basket.
“Alright?” asks someone from the Radio 4 production company. “Fine,” I lie, badly.
The one aspect that nobody has yet conquered in the modern age is how to steer balloons. Basically a balloonist is rudderless, a passive passenger of currents. The wind direction rather than the pilot always determines the destination. You can see how this would rather clip the appeal of a form of transport. “The train now approaching Platform 4 is for... well, who knows? London hopefully, but if there’s a prevailing easterly it could just as easily be Bristol, or Birmingham if the wind changes again.”
Today the wind takes us almost exactly on the same route Sadler took on that very first 4 October 1784 ascent. Fittingly I am replicating the exact flight path of the very first Englishman to fly. Now I too am looking down like Sadler on the open countryside to the north of Oxford, spotting the same checkerboard formations of tiny fields shaped in perfect squares that he saw when he passed Otmoor. This is the landscape that would later inspire Lewis Carroll’s to write his chessboard scenes.
After fifteen minutes we soar alongside a bemused looking red kite clearly thinking “what are humans doing up here?” The earth does look invitingly splendid from above - it’s definitely my kind of planet, and I’m discovering at altitude that I am rather keen to see it again and definitely want to spend some more time there. Nervous ain’t the word.
Distracting nuggets of info are helpfully dispensed by our pilot who maintains an in-flight commentary. He tells us of a rival balloon company’s pilot who once flew over a US air base visible near our current flight path and received the sinister radio message to either land immediately or be shot down. I would have refused to comply - a slow-moving 75-foot giant bright red floating bauble can’t be that much of a sitting target for the air force. Oh, hang on...
Our pilot is happy to answer any questions. Balloons have a normal life expectancy of around 500 hours of flying time, as they become progressively porous the older they get. Hence I enquire: “How old is our balloon?” “730 hours,” he replies, so it’s quite a veteran of the skies. The pilot opens the vent allowing hot air to escape while something similar is happening to my confidence.
Every minute our calm is jolted by the pilot firing twin propane burners. A silver one roars fiercely whenever heat injection is required to add extra propulsive lift. There is also a smaller red burner which is quieter, and used at lower altitudes, particularly when flying over livestock as it is less distressing - to livestock and me.
Reassuringly, the pilot explains the intense training necessary to gain a licence. There are five compulsory examinations. A hydrogen balloon pilot requires a separate licence from that of a hot air balloonist. Hydrogen balloons still need, even in the modern age, several hours of filling time - a timeframe that has not altered significantly since Sadler’s pioneering gas ballooning.
It is illegal to fly a balloon without a licence, although in answer to my question, the pilot confirms that there are no police balloons. So there is little chance of being signalled to pull over by a balloon with a flashing blue light flying besides you. (“Excuse me, Sir, would you mind blowing into this tube?” “Why, officer?” “Because we’re losing altitude.”)
Thinking of owning your own balloon to pop down the shops and seriously confuse head-scratching traffic wardens? “Can I ticket a transportation vehicle without wheels on a double yellow?” Well, all the parking fines you may avoid would be dwarfed by the cost of buying a working balloon. Our balloon has propane fuel tankers costing £2,000. Our burners check out at £8,000, with the handmade basket capable of holding twelve passengers adding another £12,000. The pilot estimates that our balloon costs a total of £36,000.
Then I realise something rather staggering. Not a landmar
k I’ve picked out on the ground, but something occurring to me right now in the wicker basket. There is no breeze - at all. I’m told that if you had the reckless tenacity to be flying during a force 8 gale, as of course James and Windham Sadler, being reckless, did, you would not feel any wind on your face. Hold up a flimsy silk scarf, and it would droop limply.
Here comes the science bit: this is due to our velocity and direction being entirely controlled by the air flow, so we are literally moving like the wind. This renders passengers devoid of any sensation of movement. We could be moving at 80mph like Sadler, but he would have felt stationary. Perhaps Sadler was simply unaware of the perils - though I doubt this as he supplied his own navigation charts and cutting-edge scientific instruments.
There is a pervading sense of removed calmness, levitating motionlessness, even though the changing landmarks before signal movement to the brain. If anything, flying in a balloon feels like inverse free-fall i.e. you are actively falling away from earth as it gets tinier and tinier below.
Most balloonists only fly when the ground wind speed is below 10mph. Sadler, of course, would consider this strangely restrictive - although given the bruising experiences he obtained from flying in strong winds, he might as well have complied with the generically adopted practice today.
There are a number of ways that our balloon, and my ballooning experience, is dissimilar to Sadler’s. For starters, I didn’t design, invent, test and manufacture my own balloon, basket, ropes, stove, netting, and fuel. Nor pilot it. Perhaps the acutest difference is we have a propane burner, relinquishing us of straw shovelling duties.
Other than that, I’m reliant on eighteenth-century technology to raise me over 3,000 feet above, and return safety to, the earth. Apart from a propane gas cylinder and burner, our equipment checklist is unreassuringly identical to Sadler’s nearly 250 years ago. As is our flight equipment, landing and navigation procedures (OK, on board computer and radio notwithstanding) as Sadler had no idea where he was going either. That’s the wind’s decision. Even the clever invention of netting to encase the balloon bag was Sadler’s very same equipment choice. Though we are not reliant on ox gut today, which Sadler would likely have deployed to ensure his envelope had an air-tight seal to retain the hot air molecules. Ensuring an air-tight membrane was crucial for silk balloon flyers, particularly with the early adoption of hydrogen, an element with a peculiarly small atom.
Anchored to the ground with guide ropes, our colourful outer membrane is referred to as the envelope. This is confusing, as I want to call it a balloon. An envelope is something different, and it appears to me that the entire plan for flying a balloon can be written on the back of one. This does not reassure me.
Here’s the simple truth - and worryingly short if about to entrust your life to such a mechanism - of how a balloon works.
Our balloon is filed with hot air. It is important to anchor the balloon with ropes before starting this procedure, or the anger fits displayed by a small child when losing their balloon will be a good-tempered shrug compared to how the balloon’s adult owner will react when informed that you neglected to restrain the balloon when filling it - and it soared away forever.
Firing a burner intermittently jets hot air into the canopy (sorry, envelope - we must use the technical terms). First, though, you must roll out the envelope into a flat design on the ground - and the balloon co-ordinator asks me to help him push it along the grass. “We’re pushing the envelope,” I remark. Then pretend I was only talking to myself, since no one laughs.
Opening the propane burner heats up the existing air in the balloon, causing it to become lighter as the air molecules thin. In turn, the balloon is now becoming lighter than the surrounding air, so will float upwards. As the air cools, it regains heaviness and accordingly the balloon will begin to sink unless the air molecules are re-heated pronto with blasts from the on-board twin burner. Reassuringly, the mouth of the balloon is not made from standard nylon like the envelope (phew), but an anti-inflammable (what is the opposite of flammable, if inflammable also means flammable?) in-inflammable (that’ll do) material known as nomex.
Nomex, a polymer was invented in the 1960s and enables a flame-resistant (could have used that phrase!) fabric to surround the flame at the envelope’s bottom. Pioneering balloonists obviously could only use decidedly non-flame-resistant materials such as paper and silk, and results were often terminal. Fatal crashes occurred as the flame was indispensable for ensuring the air in the balloon remained hotter than its surrounding air. This is why balloons are rarely spotted in the midday or early afternoon skyline, as the air is warmer, and thus lighter, than the heavier air offered by dawn or dusk.
The higher the ascent, the thinner the surrounding air: hence higher heat is required for higher altitude. Additional ascension can also be obtained by dispensing ballast, often sandbags attached to a balloon for this purpose in case a sudden lift is required if approaching overhead power wires, church spires or Peter Crouch. A deflation system is reassuringly installed in our balloon, where a cord opens a re-sealable flap. Opening this is known in ballooning parlance as “venting”, or “annoying” if you’re the only one who wants to use it to land immediately after take-off.
Likewise balloonists will often carry sandbags or even metallic weights as ballast. This is also why so many balloon pilots fly with Richard Branson, although disappointingly no one appears to have needed to lob him out of the basket yet to gain quick altitude.
The mechanism for raising our hot air balloon replicates Sadler’s and the Montgolfiers’ method from the early 1780s. Like Sadler, our envelope is securely fastened to the basket by cords and netting connected to a tiny hoop at the balloon’s crown, as is the case in other forms of balloon which rely upon helium or hydrogen. The latter is the “rarefied air” that Sadler produced himself, and operates upon the principle of having less mass than the surrounding air. Theoretically, a hydrogen balloon, if perfectly sealed, would ascend indefinitely until it reaches even thinner air. Air is thicker, and thus heavier, nearer the earth’s crust due to gravity attracting air molecules.
Since indefinite and unending ascent would not be a big selling point in any balloon trip company’s brochures, a valve is necessary in both types of balloon to release air. Sadler sensibly ensured these were in his design blueprints, whereas Lunardi blindly rolled the dice of fate by flying without a valve - and thus having little if any say in his landing destiny.
Like Sadler’s balloon, we don’t have any brakes either. Unlike Sadler’s balloon, we turn to propane regularly to provide extra lift.
Rather understandably, it is a definite no-no to throw anything over the basket, but I have a tiny dual-pronged chip fork. With sleight of hand, I furtively manage to drop this over the side without attracting witnesses when we drift over an empty field: it is a direct homage to the moment on Sadler’s first manned voyage when he dropped a fork too.
The progressive tide of ever faster travel has swept away the interaction with nature that slower sorts of transport, like walking, gentle biking or ballooning, allow. As if to prove this, another red kite approaches us, coming surprisingly close. Eyeing us with more curiosity than suspicion, he then tilts his wings to the left and swoops away impressively, as if to remind us humans that we’re only flying artificially, and not a true natural like him. I lean forward over the edge of the wicker basket for the first time in the flight, keen to see the red kite race away.
Look down and there is a terrifying 3,000-foot drop below. Look upwards and the balloon appears to be on fire with huge blasts of lit orange propane. Neither sight calms my amygdala.
There is a Swede aboard who works as a chef. Wow, this is texting-worthy - only we’re not allowed to text in the balloon. I spoke to a real Swedish chef. My smile when he relays the twin information of nationality and profession is greeted by a look that I easily translate as, “I am sick and tired of pe
ople saying ‘oh, you’re a Swedish chef but you don’t sound like the Muppets’. That’s not even a Swedish accent.’” He says all this, sounding exactly like the Muppets. In order to avoid smiling inappropriately, I stop crouching with knees permanently bent in the basket, and peer right over the side for only the third time in the flight. That has the effect of applying the emergency brakes to my rising smile, and I feel genuinely terrified again.
I start chanting internally, like a mantra, some of the advice imparted by my counsellors: Steve and Claire, the Australian model on the blind date, cerebral phobia expert Dr. Hannah, and many others who kindly helped me on “my journey” to get to the point where I am now: an acute acrophobic 3,000 feet up in a giant wicker hamper. It does help, enormously. For proof that this concerted counselling effort works, see me. Currently 3,000 feet up in that wicker balloon basket.
***
Then something occurs that I was sincerely not expecting. Half an hour into the flight, I begin to shed the fear. Slowly at first, but then after a few more minutes, large chunks of anxiety begin falling from me. Another five minutes elapse and I’m almost relaxed - not quite, it would be dishonest to say so, but I am immeasurably calmer than the abject emotional arousal in which I’d spent the first forty minutes of the flight. My explanation for this is that my amygdala just got bored with firing “Danger! Danger! Fire! Fire! Panic! Panic!” and thought “well, that’s five o’clock, I’m off down the pub.” Maybe that’s how controlled exposure, or even flooding, techniques work in addressing then nullifying a phobia. Your misfiring amygdala is only prepared to put in so much work on one shift before knocking off for the day.
The Man With His Head in the Clouds Page 30
