Hardy & friends soar up into the clouds over London, drifting westward, they lose their way. Coming down to enquire of their location, they "frighten unsuspecting pedestrians as their disembodied voices boomed out of the darkness.'" They end up in the Thames, and have further interesting adventures.

Looking forward to this one!

A truly enjoyable book, amusing, and veddy veddy English. In September, 1924, Sir (or Mr. as he then was) Alister Hardy attended the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. Having had a fascination for "flying machines" from an early age, he naturally took advantage of the opportunity to be taken up in a balloon. Much to his surprise, he discovered that the pilot was E.T. Willows, an early balloon pioneer and one of Hardy's childhood heroes.

After an afternoon of spending half-crowns to remain in company and conversation with Willows, he determined to take advantage of an offer to cross London by balloon.

One must delight in the way Hardy off-handedly remarks that he was in London "preparing for an expedition to the Antarctic in Scott's old ship The Discovery". He prevails upon two of his expedition colleagues and an old friend to join him. One of his companions, Neil Mackintosh, wrote a poem about their adventure, called "The Balloonatics", which is included.

Sir Alister turns out to have been quite an interesting figure, a marine biologist and zoologist, with some rather controversial ideas regarding evolution.

Released on Monday, January 26, 2004 at Mailed to a fellow Bookcrosser in n/a, n/a Controlled Releases.

Sent to silentmiaouw.

Big surprise in my mailbox this morning - this looks delightful, just my kind of book. Interested to see the Antarctic connection - I recently had to do a load of research on Antarctic exploration for a travel guide.

Just finished reading this in the train this morning. I shall put it on my shelf as a companion volume to Three Men in a Boat - this is Five Men in a Balloon. It is a delightful story; I loved the way the writer described the silence (last sounds from earth were the barking of dogs and whistles of trains) and the way people in villages were spooked to hear disembodied voices asking their way from up above. What particularly interested me was the mention that they landed in Waterperry, near Wheatley. In 1991, the company I was working for, Berlitz Travel Guides, was transferred to Oxford by the owner, Robert Maxwell. I was seconded there for three months; the office was at Wheatley, in a decaying prefabricated building that had served as a hospital during WWII. We spent many a lunch hour in the nearby village of Waterperry, where the grounds of a Georgian mansion were open to the public with a pleasant tearoom (speciality was homemade elderflower cordial). It was in this very place, in the cuttings nursery, that I bought one of my most well-loved books, Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray (now with bookczuk). Classical concerts are held on the lawns in summer. The balloonists stayed overnight in a pub in Wheatley—I can only remember one pub so it must be the one where we went for jacket potatoes when we were too hard-up to go to Waterperry. Pure serendipity, when the mention of a name can stir up forgotten memories (Oxford is my favourite place after Paris; I have been there many times and always at crucial, decision-making moments in my existence.)
My only quibble with the book is a minor one - the designer had the strange idea of filling the space between the text and the folio with two rather large and elaborate Art Nouveau colophons on almost every page. These did not bother me at first but because they were always present in my line of sight they eventually became irritating. Otherwise I would have given this 10 out of 10.

I took this out again and reread it two weeks ago because I had signed up for a balloon flight in Cappadocia. In fact I thought I might actually release it there, but decided to hold onto it a little longer. It will probably end up in the Hot-Air Balloon Museum at Château d'Oex.
Anyway, now my flight is behind me, I can only confirm the sensations described by the writer - you do not feel yourself lifting away from the ground; it seems as though you are standing motionless in the basket as you watch the ground receding. Up in the air, the same; the currents carry you wherever they will and you do not feel any sway. The silence is intense, apart from the occasional whoosh as the pilot sends extra heat into the balloon whenever you are too close to the ground. It is a fantastic experience, the earth is so beautiful. The difference between balloons then and now is that ours was equipped with a GPS, and the pilot kept communicating with the ground crew who followed us around and were waiting when we touched down in a meadow. Our pilot, an Englishman, said that hopefully we would land gently and the basket would kiss the ground. In fact we landed squarely and silently right on the trailer! Afterwards, the team set up a table complete with cloth and vase of roses, and we all drank a glass of champagne. It was 6.30am! I should mention that check-in was 5am and wakeup call an ungodly 4.15. A truly uplifting start to the day!
Picture: drifting over Cappadocia.

I never released this at Château-d'Oex and decided it would make a nice little hug for someone who lives in a town that is mentioned at the beginning. I re-read it yet again before packing it up this morning and delighted in the very English understatement (and also noticed the mention of crowds outside a pub waiting for it to open on Saturday night).

Uplifting thoughts travel with it, as well as some chocolate.