We hung around for a while twiddling our thumbs, and after an hour or so this guy turned up on a four-wheel-drive quad bike. From the full gear he was wearing he was clearly a fireman, so I handed him the phrasebook and pointed at the appropriate sentence, smiling in what I hoped might be an ingratiating fashion. ‘Welcome to Finland’ he said, in impeccable and what seemed entirely unaccented English. When I complimented him on this he explained the reason for his fluency, saying that he worked for Santa Claus as one of his gnomes. I assumed he was taking the mick, but he then told us how Minnervi Verni is famous worldwide for the Santa’s grotto that they have there each Christmas. Apparently, every winter you get up to 10,000 English-speaking people who come for the experience, reindeer and everything. He might be a fireman by day, but in the evenings he was also one of Santa’s little helpers.
After about five trips with the bike he finally got all our stuff to the nearest road, at which point Mike and his buddy, our two Canadian retrievers, arrived to meet us. They’d known we would be heading towards Scandinavia, and even with that head start had done an incredible job of getting to where we were within hours of us. With a top three finish Jon and I had to fly back via England to Brussels for the closing ceremony, which is always held on the Saturday a week after the racers set off. We’d never have made it by road, as that would have been a four or five day drive. I almost wish we hadn’t bothered.
When we reached Brussels we immediately found ourselves involved in an incredible amount of hassle. It transpired that one of the four teams that had gone through Norway had done so without contacting ATC, and the Norwegians had been obliged to close down their air space. Now they were threatening to prosecute the whole Gordon Bennett organizing committee unless they found out which particular team had transgressed. I knew we had talked to ATC, and it should have been perfectly easy to prove it from the unique code on our transponder, but we were virtually frogmarched into a room and made to fill out all our logs and give the exact details of our track.
Jon had just got married and was terrified that he might suddenly be facing a legal bill of up to a million quid, and I wasn’t too chuffed with the idea either. Surprisingly it turned out that the culprit was one of the German teams, but I still think the Belgian authorities and their Gordon Bennett Committee treated us appallingly. I’ve never forgotten or forgiven this, and it was pretty clear from the start that they were pointing the finger at us as the guilty party without any evidence whatsoever. We were certainly much less experienced than the other three teams, and I can only assume that our getting third place on our first attempt had put a lot of people’s noses out of joint. We were absolutely thrilled by what we had managed to do, but this behaviour definitely made it feel as if a bit of the shine had been taken off our achievement.
* * *
The race from Waasmunster in Belgium in 2006 in which we’d come third had been won by a Belgian team, so the 2007 event was scheduled to leave from Brussels, but the whole thing had to be cancelled due to bad weather. Without a winning country for their national association to host the 2008 event the rules stated that they had to look back to the last non-Belgian winners, who were Richard Abruzzo and Carol Rymer Davies in 2004. They had hosted the event from Albuquerque in 2005 (which had obviously been won by Belgians), when due to the local weather the race was unusually held in October, at the time the America’s Challenge is usually flown, and which this year the Gordon Bennett Cup replaced. It all sounds very complicated, but rules are rules, particularly in the case of the Gordon Bennett committee. With a couple of placings in races to our names now, and the event due to fly from Albuquerque again in October 2008, we naturally wanted to take part since we’d done so well there in the past.
Although we were the only people wanting to enter, we still had to apply to the British Balloon and Airship Club to be nominated. I’d written to the chairman to tell him that we planned to be there, and he ticked me off in no uncertain terms saying that we still had to go through the formal application process again, even though there was no one else up against us and there could have been three teams anyway. Aaargh! What is it about balloons that makes people behave this way? Anyway, we were selected, as the only team flying for Britain, and off we went to Albuquerque. We borrowed a balloon and basket again from Bert, as that was cheaper than me buying my own or hiring one, and we had Tim Cole there to inflate for us. We arrived a couple of days early, and my two now old friends Nigel Mitchell and Bob Wilson came out with me to retrieve. Nigel has become a bit of a lucky charm for me, as I’ve always been placed when I have had him with me there.
We took off in the evening somewhere in the middle of the line, amidst all the fanfare of national anthems. I’d had the weather forecast from Luc, who’d said keep it low. The first couple of days will be very slow, and then you will begin to pick up speed. That night was certainly low and slow, but we started to head down towards Mexico and the White Planes missile testing ground. That is most definitely a no go area, and entering that would have disqualified us at once. I called up their ATC on our satellite phone and asked if we could come over? He said no. We’d have our transponder on and wouldn’t land? The answer was still no. Even if we just skirt the edge? Look, he said, you’re not getting this are you. No means no. You’ll just have to land now. In the end we missed it by about a mile.
We then started to head back up north, and a full day after we had left, when other balloons were way out over the prairies, we found ourselves back over the launch site in Albuquerque again. In a whole day we’d effectively gone nowhere, zero miles! Nigel and Bob had washed their hands of us, assuming they’d have a pretty easy retrieve, as we were in last place by a country mile. But because we’d kept things low we’d hardly used any ballast and continued to stay down at only a couple of hundred feet. We threaded our way north through a pass between the Rocky Mountains and the mountains of Albuquerque, very beautiful country, heading up towards Santa Fe and back into the prairies.
It was now the middle of our second night, about 10.00 p.m., and I was flying the balloon with Jon asleep in the bottom of the basket. We were creeping along at about 5 knots, and I was chatting to our control room back home. Suddenly Clive Bailey came on the line. He’s fairly excitable at the best of times, but now it was obvious he was just back from the pub and had a few drinks inside him. ‘Luc says climb’, he shouted, ‘and you have to do it now! Lose 20lbs.’ Action stations! I didn’t want to use any sand ballast if I could avoid it, so I looked around to see if there was anything else we could dump. We had two big tractor batteries to run our radio, and one of those would have to go. Jon was still too groggy to consult, so I heaved one up to the edge of the basket and looked down. It was a clear night and I could see open fields below, so over it went. I actually heard it fall all the way down, and then there was a muffled thump. Immediately I felt the fabric of the balloon start to move and we began to climb at a hell of a rate. We shot up a couple of thousand feet, which put us on a completely new track at a much higher speed. Luc was dead right.
Heading out over the plains the next day we knew a lot of other balloons had already landed, having used all their ballast flying high over the mountains, and we were starting to creep up the field, picking them off one by one. It was very hot, and we had to put up sheets around the basket to protect us from the sun, but we had a peaceful day as we took turns kipping and drinking cups of tea. At various places we had to talk with military ATC and ask their permission if we could come through, and they were always eager to have a chat. One guy said they had a sortie flying through in ten minutes, and we heard him speaking with his pilots and asking them if they were ok with our location. We didn’t hear them coming, but suddenly two fighter jets shot beneath our basket, screaming past with an incredible noise which scared the living daylights out of us.
On our fourth day, we were at about 10,000 feet, when suddenly we hit a snowy squall, the temperature dropped and we just fell from the sky. That meant throwing ou
t a lot of ballast, but we knew we were doing well and were determined to keep going if we could. A big German rival of ours had just landed, and we were now briefly in the lead, but still had a very good Austrian team behind us. By the time it had got dark we were over Madison just north of Chicago, coming up to the Great Lakes. We only had one bag of sand remaining, and had to ask ourselves if we really wanted to cross a body of water as large as Lake Michigan, which is huge, at night?
We were down to 8,000 feet, and when you cross colder water there is always a drop in temperature which means you lose a great deal of lift. Apart from the battery earlier in our flight I’d already cut off and jettisoned half our trail rope. You aren’t supposed to throw out anything apart from sand, and knowing the Gordon Bennett Committee it wouldn’t totally surprise me if someone reads this and tries to disqualify us retrospectively, but everyone does it. Anyway, we didn’t think we could make it all the way across the Great Lakes, so the only sensible thing to do was try and land as near as possible to the shore. Second place is better than a kick in the arse.
But it was solid woods below as we came in, Jon spooning out the ballast. We were very light now, well into our last bag of sand and just a little water left. Although it was pitch dark and the balloon totally silent, the incredible thing is that all the animals below could clearly sense our presence, and we heard the deer racing to and fro beneath us, the birds flying up. They know you are there, just skimming the treetops. I put the spotlight on, very glad to see a cornfield to put down in, and with what was left of our trail rope dragging behind we managed to hit the ground and come to a halt, half a bag of sand remaining. We really couldn’t have got any further.
It was midnight. I contacted Clive, spoke to the Gordon Bennett control room in Albuquerque and gave them our co-ordinates from the GPS. Second place was great, but the Austrians were still flying. Seeing the lights of a farm in the distance we took our passports with us and headed in that direction, but began to worry that turning up in the middle of the night at a lonely house in mid-America was a recipe for getting our brains blown out. We shouted to alert anyone inside that we were there, but no one answered so we trudged off to find the main road. Whenever we passed another farmhouse we’d shout again, and now lights flicked on and dogs came out to bark at us, but no one emerged to ask who we were or what we wanted. We’d begun to think we might as well head back to the balloon when in the distance we heard a siren approaching. Obviously someone had decided to call the police, and we knew they were coming to get us.
We stood in the middle of the road with our hands up, and the police car screeched to a halt 30 feet from us and trained its searchlight into our eyes. Once we’d very politely confirmed his question that we weren’t carrying any weapons, that we were just pilots who had landed nearby, he came and checked our passports and after that he was as nice as pie. Putting us in the back of his car he drove to the nearest hick town, and found us a motel where we checked-in at 1.00 a.m. Before we went to sleep we called Nigel and Bob, to say they should meet us there as soon as possible. It was actually my birthday, but we were so shattered we just crashed and went to sleep.
The next morning I emerged from the shower with a towel around me, and saw a note had been pushed under the door. I assumed it must be from the motel people, but it was actually from Nigel and Bob and I’ve kept it to this day. It only had two words on it, and just said ‘you’ve won’. I thought they were taking the mick and phoned them up, but it was true. The Austrians had landed an hour after us, but just short of our distance, and we had indeed won the Gordon Bennett. I woke Jon up and gave him a big hug, somewhat to his surprise at first I imagine. Not only had we won, but we were the first British team ever to do so. After that we went out for a big breakfast, then to retrieve our balloon and thank the deep-sleeping farmer for the use of his field. It was a fun drive back to Albuquerque, and I remember a song by Elbow—who had just won the Mercury Prize—blaring out on the CD, which was our anthem that year. We were driving a big van and took three-hour turns at the wheel, whilst the others could kip and lounge in the back. We felt like kids on a road trip.
In Bert’s balloon Lady Luck we’d flown for seventy-four hours and covered 1,100 miles. Of course, our winning the Gordon Bennett Cup presented a headache for the British Balloon and Airship Club, as they’d now have to host the competition themselves. This would actually be in September 2010, since the rules had just been changed to give national associations two years for planning, which we’d certainly need since it would be for the first time in England and everything would have to be done from scratch. Everyone was very excited about it of course, and Don Cameron set up and chaired a committee on which I also sat. Lots of cities wanted to act as host, and the Duke of Edinburgh even offered us the use of Smith’s Lawn, a polo field just outside of Heathrow, although this didn’t really feel like a terribly sensible location to fly from in view of other airborne traffic. Eventually everyone agreed on Bristol as giving the best package.
There isn’t any prize for winning the Gordon Bennett, other than the cup itself that you have to hand back the next year. If you are borrowing a balloon, as we had done previously, you can probably do the whole thing fairly cheaply without spending a great deal. When hosting in Bristol though we certainly splashed out a lot, since we wanted to make a show and have our own marquee and toilets, something you definitely value if taken short just before lift-off. Having competed quite a few times now I can definitely say the sole British-held event thus far was the best organized competition I’ve taken part in, with a lavish champagne reception at the Wills Building, and the Civil Aviation Authority also came up trumps by agreeing to close an area of airspace for us between 11.00 p.m. and 6.00 a.m. We also had the largest field since the war with thirty-two entrants. We had a deliberate attitude of wanting as many people flying as possible, unlike say the Germans who often seem to use any excuse to try and disqualify you. To that end we did a lot of pre-checking well in advance, things like licences, insurance and medical certificates, to try and resolve any problems before people actually turned up.
This time I was flying with a new co-pilot, a neighbour of mine and a proper commercial airline pilot called Simon Carey who we all predictably nicknamed Scarey, but we also made history with a full complement of three British teams, one of them female. The departure point was from the Avon mouth, where you would normally get a sea breeze coming from the south-west, and we were praying for good weather. We had all these big tankers of hydrogen there, but only for two days so if the necessary conditions didn’t come together that would have been the end of the competition. As it turned out the Saturday was perfect, crystal clear skies and winds of no more than 10 knots, so everyone could inflate comfortably during the day. Everybody we knew came down to wave us off.
Simon and I were flying a new balloon I’d bought and drew the very last place in the departure order lottery, lifting off just before midnight. We almost touched straight back down again on the podium, which would have been an embarrassing end to the race for us. We knew before the start that we would face a problem with the prevailing winds, which would have us heading out over the English Channel and across Europe, and later on if we got that far we’d almost certainly pass over Italy. With the Italian prohibition on balloons flying between an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise, we had to ensure that we wouldn’t be there at night. A Swiss team, the very first to leave, shot straight up to 14,000 feet and found a track that took them hell for leather across the continent at about 45 knots, which just brought them through Italy the following day with about fifteen minutes to spare. This was an incredibly audacious tactical gamble that paid off, but leaving ninety minutes later we never even considered that as an option.
We had to find a much slower wind speed, that wouldn’t bring us to Italy before morning on the second day. Sometimes flying a balloon in a distance competition seems a bit like a three-dimensional chess game, and strategy plays a big part. Although it
is described as a race it isn’t really that, and many people prefer to be flying behind so they end up knowing exactly what they have to beat. The tortoise very often does end up beating the hare. Over the course of what might be three days, balloons hundreds of miles apart are obviously going to experience very different sorts of weather, and all these things have to be taken into account in your calculations.
We pottered across France and during the late afternoon when coming up to Toulouse Simon felt the call of nature. He and Jon are both wonderful pilots to fly with, but there is one very significant difference between them in that whereas Jon seems able to last a week without relieving himself Simon has to do so three times a day. In a basket about 4 by 5 feet, that rocks all over the place if you both stand up, this requires a lot of arrangement when you have all your equipment to move around, batteries and maps as well as yourselves. We had a contraption called a shit-box, which is pretty self-explanatory, into which you put a plastic bag, and whilst Simon was doing his business I’d look the other way and admire the scenery. From start to finish the whole thing must have taken nearly an hour, so it has always featured as a significant part of our trips together. I’m afraid we do tend to dispose of our bags over the side, as a sense of companionship can only extend so far.
A lot of balloons landed in the south of France as they didn’t want to venture out over the Mediterranean, so that reduced us down just to the hardcore flyers, four or five of us. We had to avoid hitting Italian airspace before morning, which made a slow speed essential, and this required us to keep low. Flying over Corsica was out of the question, as the mountains would have sent us up to a higher wind speed, but we also had to avoid Sardinia as it is a part of Italy. Simon pulled off an incredible feat of flying in just managing to thread us between the two, and if you look at a map you’ll see exactly how narrow that gap is. A German team were disqualified when they went further south than us, but we were safely through and reached Italy in the early morning, smack over Rome and able to see the Vatican City below. We had a fair bit of hassle with Italian ATC because of Rome’s three commercial and military airports, who wanted us to fly at ridiculously specific heights, and we did have to climb high at one point to get over a bastard of a mountain, Monte Amaro I think, but by the afternoon we were safely out of Italian airspace and over the Adriatic.
No Such Thing as Failure Page 23