A Bath Story: Drifting West with Fly Away Ballooning
At 7am Saturday, Royal Victoria Park was still half-asleep. It was the morning after my birthday celebrations and I felt like the luckiest person in the world. A group of strangers stepped into a basket and then, quietly, the burners roared. Within minutes, the ordinary gave way to something weightless. The balloon lifted, the city got smaller and we were soaring like birds.
Hugo from Fly Away Ballooning was unhurried and clearly at home in this place.
As our flight drifted west, the calm was only interrupted by the occasional burst of flames and the soft chorus of the family on board singing happy 50th birthday to their dad. Fields stitched together in greens and golds, the Avon river winding as we floated over little lambs frolicking in the fields.
If you have been wanting to do a ride, be warned, it is addictive. The silence, the laughter, easy conversation, and that shared sense of “can you believe this?” seems to turn strangers into temporary co-conspirators. You feel as though you are all sharing a special secret that nobody else knows about.
Ballooning, for Hugo, isn’t a career pivot or a late-found passion, it is an inheritance. A third-generation balloonist, he grew up around burners and baskets, learning the rhythms of flight long before earning his commercial licence in 2019. His experience spans continents from the Australian Outback to the Italian Alps and the rice fields of Chiang Mai, but it’s the lineage behind him that gives the journey a deeper resonance.
His grandmother, Lady Gwen Bellew, was one of the pioneers who introduced hot air ballooning to the UK. In the late 1960s, she founded the London Balloon Club and flew one of the country’s first modern hot air balloons, London Pride. His father, Giles, has spent over half a century in the air, contributing not just flights but innovations, most notably the parachute rip system now standard across the industry. Ballooning, in this family, isn’t just practiced, it’s shaped.
There’s a sense of comfort and pride as you float over Somerset, that you’re part of something continuous. Not overly polished but a real experience, done well, by people who’ve lived it for decades.
The landing was easy and then of course, bubbles. A small, celebratory ritual that somehow fits perfectly. Glasses clink, email addresses are traded, and the morning continues as we talk about when we can do our next one..
Book yours at www.flyawayballooning.com.