I had wanted a hot air balloon flight for a long time and received a flight from my mum as a Christmas present in 2003. It was my first time flying in a hot air balloon, but not the last, and I have now crossed it off my bucket list.

Early one morning in May 2004, my sister’s better half, Brett, picked me up from the family home in Fareham, and we drove to Alton, Hampshire, for our balloon flight.

When we arrived, we helped lay out the balloon to have the air fanned inside it and warmed up to inflate it for our flight. We all soon climbed into the basket, slowly rose into the sky and floated across the fields and homes around Alton and Hampshire.

It was a fantastic experience, but what struck me the most as we slowly floated across Hampshire was how clear the voices of people on the ground were as we floated above them. I could hear what people were saying as they talked about us and waved at us as we floated over. I enjoyed the freedom as we floated over Hampshire, but it was all over too quickly. I could have stayed in the air for hours more, but after a few hours of drifting through a blue sky, our pilot picked a field to descend into and brought us down. After a soft bump, we landed on the basket’s side and clambered out safely. Our chase vehicle soon caught up with us, and we were all given a glass of champagne to toast the flight before we were all driven back to the field in Alton, where we had started.

It was a great experience, and I repeated it when I went on a hot air balloon flight over the desert in Marrakech, Morocco, in 2024.