Day 1,457

Balloons

After barely 4 hours sleep I awoke to a now familiar sound, hot air balloons inflating. We raced out of the tent, woke Matt, who though fast asleep was still managing to hit the snooze button on his alarm, and we stood and looked, and gazed, whilst the sky above filled with balloons. Matt stopped counting at 97. We were amazed as some descended rapidly only to rise again, the passengers in the baskets could be heard cheering along. It was magical, we loved it, but although it was a truly unique and awesome experience it didn't knock Doe Castle from its number 1 slot as our favourite wild camp spot. Still made it to second place tho! We stood for ages, then made coffee, then a second coffee, it wasn't even 8am so we had plenty of time. We had been adopted last night by a dog, I named Fido. He'd stayed all night, so I guess we were camped at ‘his’ place. Fido sat with us all morning. 

We finally and reluctantly packed up. A wonderful family group walked by and stopped for a chat. They were so interested in all our adventures. Leaving and returning time and time again with one more question. We didn't mind, we were in no rush. Finally they asked us to come back with them for the evening. We were so tempted, they were such lovely people but it would have meant retracing our steps and we really need to keep going forward.  

Eventually we got back on the bikes, Matt led us and Fido down hill on some fantastic mountain bike trails, unfortunately we were on fully loaded tourers, but boy we had fun. Even Fido joined in! The picture below would make a great caption competition - let us know your ideas.

Caption competition…