It’s just 2 weeks until Valentine’s Day and your time is quickly running out, so let’s make things nice an easy for you. There is still time to book your loved one a paradise hot air balloon ride for February 14^th, but you’ll need to organise this fast. Adventure Balloons take great pleasure in offering romantic balloon rides. We are well aware that it is an experience that is likely to stay with you forever and will certainly make a real impact. We know you want to impress, otherwise you wouldn’t be making a statement with a balloon ride present; that’s why we pull out all the stops to tailor each individual ride to each of our customer’s specific desires. Let us know what you expect from your day with us, whether you’d like to fly in a group or if you’d like it to be a more intimate affair.

We can offer your flights in locations Oxford, Reading, Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage, Watford, Tring, London, Basingstoke, Hartley Wintney, Guildford, Farnham, Godalming, West Meon, Micheldever, Alton, Winchester, Kent, Sussex and Essex. There’s no waiting on the postman with us, you can simply book online and we will email you your vouchers to be with you almost instantly! However if you’d prefer us to post them we will.

If you determined to fly on a specific day, call our offices on 01252 844222 to check the date availability and book, or alternatively view our ‘Dates’ page where you can see this information online. Do bear in mind however that due to ballooning being a weather dependant ‘sport’, if the conditions aren’t right on the day, we will have to re-schedule. We advise that you call on the day of your flight to check that the flight will be going ahead.

Next you simply need to choose from our various different voucher options which include the following:

Weekday Morning Champagne Balloon Flight – Just £89 per person! – Valid for flights from Berkshire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Oxford, Surrey and Yorkshire. The voucher entitles you to a weekday morning flight during April – October and includes full colour gift voucher valid for 12 calendar months, flight in a hot air balloon, passenger insurance, traditional Champagne toast and presentation of flight certificate with return to the take off site by licensed minibus.

Weekday Champagne Balloon Flight – Just £109 per person! – Valid for flights from Berkshire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Oxford, Surrey and York. The voucher entitles you to a weekday flight during April – October at any of our time slots and includes full colour gift voucher valid for 12 calendar months, flight in a hot air balloon, passenger insurance, traditional Champagne toast and presentation of flight certificate with return to the take off site by licensed minibus.

Standard Champagne Balloon Flight – Just £129 per person! – Valid for flights from Berkshire, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, Oxford, Surrey, Sussex and York. The voucher entitles you to a weekday or weekend flight during April – October at any of our time slots and includes full colour gift voucher valid for 12 calendar months, flight in a hot air balloon, passenger insurance, traditional Champagne toast and presentation of flight certificate with return to the take off site by licensed minibus.

Nationwide Champagne Balloon Flight – Just £139 per person! – Valid for flights from the widest selection of launch sites across the UK (excludes London). Includes full colour gift voucher valid for 12 calendar months, flight in a hot air balloon, passenger insurance, traditional Champagne toast and presentation of flight certificate with return transport to the take off site.

So you’ve decided on Adventure Balloons as the operator to take you up on your first hot air balloon ride, but now you simply cannot decide which of the fabulous locations to opt for! Tricky one; all our locations are wonderful for their own reasons, we cover the fascinating Oxfordshire, York & Lincolnshire, fabulous Hertfordshire, you’ll see plenty in Berkshire, and plenty more in Essex Kent and Sussex, one of our favourites is North Hampshire and Surrey is simply beautiful. London is of course out of the question with this year’s London Olympics and Paralympics and also with the Queens Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. The Department of Transport have made it clear that for security reasons our flights will preclude for 2012. You can however book for 2013 is you’d like to see London from 3’000 foot in the air!

One of our favourite balloon flight paths is our South Hampshire location taking off from launch sites in Alton, Micheldever, Popham, West Meon and Winchester.

Depending on which site we take off from (which is determined by the wind direction and weather on the day of the flight), you may see the impressive Winchester Cathedral, the breathtaking rolling Hampshire countryside, the tranquil River Test and various small villages such as Laverstoke, Whitchurch, and the Candovers during the balloon ride. However, this too depends on which direction the wind is blowing. You may also see large estates such as Leckford on the River Test where Waitrose produce a lot of their food, the Mid Hants Steam Railway that runs from Alton to Alresford, and if you’re exceptionally lucky, you may even see a glider circling around Lasham airfield, or microlights flying from Popham airfield!

When flying from our South Hampshire launch sites we have to keep clear of Southampton Airport at Eastleigh, and also keep our passengers out of the Solent! So you can see why in order to provide you with a safe and enjoyable flight, the site chosen will depend entirely on the wind direction and speed on the day.

Why not visit the site where you can easily book now in any of our flight locations, you can even click here to see videos of our flights over Hampshire! However if you’re after a more personal touch, then call one of our team on 01252 844222!

Are you thinking about booking a hot air balloon flight over our beloved capital city? Well I’m not surprised; with so much to offer in the way of architecture, historical buildings and cutting edge developments, London is sure to offer many surprises from 3’000 feet in the air! Well here at Adventure Balloons we’re proud to include London on our list of balloon flight locations.

However latest discussions with the Department of Transport have made it clear that security arrangements both at our launch sites and in London’s airspace required for the Queens Diamond Jubilee Celebrations and the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics will preclude our Central London Hot Air Balloon Rides for all of the 2012 season. Worry not however, you can purchase vouchers for London balloon flights in 2013 from November 2012! What better plan for an extra special Christmas gift! Forward planning is always a good idea for grand gestures such as this, and with plenty of notice you’ll certainly raise the funds in time!

Vouchers start from as little as £89 per person and if a 2013 London hot air balloon flight is what you’re looking for and you need to budget for it now, then why not call our offices to find out exactly how much it would cost on the date/time of your choice? Make sure you give us details of how many people will be flying, whether you’re looking for a sunrise booking or a sunset, and whether you’re after a weekday or weekend flight. With just a little put by each month, you could have Christmas 2012 completely sorted!

However if you just can’t contain your excitement and you’d like to book a flight for this year, then why not consider our other locations; Oxford, Reading, Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage, Watford, Tring, London, Basingstoke, Hartley Wintney, Guildford, Farnham, Godalming, West Meon, Micheldever, Alton, Winchester, Kent, Sussex and Essex.

What’s more, you can even book one of our exclusive ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ balloons (available in 2-4 persons or 16 persons for larger party flights) which are available on most of our balloon flights in Berkshire, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Oxford, Surrey and York in 2012.

For more information simply visit the site or call us on 01252 844222.

Welcome back from us all at Adventure Balloons and a Happy New Year. We hope you’ve all had a wonderful Christmas and an exciting New Year. Many of us have begun the year with big plans and a sense of things to come. Many of us have been very vocal about the hard times of the previous year and are looking at 2012 as the year to break the cycle, the year for positivity and great things. And what better way to bring in 2012 that with a magical hot air balloon ride?!

Imagine rising up into the sky, the sense that the world is falling away from you, the feeling it would symbolise to you; leaving the past behind you. Once up, you’ll drift along with the wind, appreciating a 360° view of the world, from a completely different angle. You’ll look at the land and this New Year from a different perspective, with hope, positivity and a wonderful feeling of absolute calm. There’s nothing like being 3’000 foot in the air to give you perspective!

We tailor every balloon flight to the individual and always welcome the knowledge of each flyers occasion and the reason for their flight. This way we can pull out all the stops to enhance your flight, allowing you to enjoy it to the max. So when booking your flight, let us know what made you decide to fly. You could be looking for an exhilarating way to bring in the Year, a fun experience, a thrill with friends. Maybe you’re after a birthday flight with a big group of you and a party atmosphere, but on the other hand, you might be longing for a solo flight of complete peace where you can gather your thoughts and enjoy the beauty of our world. We get our thrill from seeing our customer’s enjoyment and feel a sense of achievement with every happy customer. So help us to help you get the most from your day with us.

Remember, no flight is complete without a celebratory glass of champagne, complements of us, of course!

For more information, to check date availability or to book your flight, simply visit us at www.adventureballoons.co.uk or call us on 01252 844222.

With reports of strong winds tearing through most of the UK we’ve seen some pretty interesting stories recently. With planes at Aberdeen Airport unable to land, overturned aircrafts at Redhill Aerodrome in Surrey, roofs ripped off at Epsom Racecourse, large tree’s blowing over causing fatalities in Tunbridge Wells plus similar issues in Kent, 100mph winds blowing large wheelie bins around in Edinburgh, high seas and force 10 winds causing the Port of Dover to close, a sailor killed after his vessel was hit by a large wave in the English Channel, thousands of people still without power in parts of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and so the list goes on, and on and on and…

Severe weather warnings across many parts of the UK are being issued by the Met Office, with major storm-force winds clearly causing serious disruption! So we can safely say that the New Year has brought flight delays here at Adventure Balloons! So if you have a flight booked with us (or anyone else in the UK for that matter), do phone in and check before you set off as you may be disappointed when you arrive on site!

However don’t let any of this put you off! As you know the weather in our beloved Britain can change in the blink of an eye, tomorrow could be clear and sunny! If you’ve been thinking about booking a flight, why not get in touch and we can advise you when we believe the conditions to be ok and when we have availability. We strongly advise that you still phone on the day of your flight to check that the conditions are appropriate for hot air ballooning.

To book you adventure, you can choose from various locations in Oxfordshire, York & Lincolnshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, London, Essex Kent Sussex, South Hampshire, North Hampshire and Surrey. Simply visit our site to book online, or call us on local rate 01252 844222.

Organise your ‘pick-me-up’ treat now and you can start the New Year with the knowledge that you have something very wonderful to look forward to. You can book as far ahead in the next 12 months as you like, pick a date which means something to you, or simply celebrate a birthday, Valentine’s day, an anniversary in style. Here at Adventure Balloons we pride ourselves on providing the most unbeatable service tailoring each flight to the individual, creating a moment that will stay with you a lifetime.

You can enjoy an hour’s flight in any of the following locations; Oxford, Reading, Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage, Watford, Tring, London, Basingstoke, Hartley Wintney, Guildford, Farnham, Godalming, West Meon, Micheldever, Alton, Winchester, Kent, Sussex and Essex. But that’s not where it ends; so that you can make a ‘day of it’ we encourage all passengers to help set up the balloon and take it down again so that they get a real feel for what’s involved in ballooning and how it all works. You will enjoy a champagne toast and finally a flight certificate to commemorate the day and give you a token to remember it by, as if the memory isn’t enough!

We also give you the opportunity to purchase your in flight photo which you can hang on your wall with pride or tuck away in the photo album ready to show your friends and loved ones, along with giving them the exciting story of your day with us. Adventure Balloons were in fact one of the first balloon companies to provide in flight photography for passengers on balloon flights and in 2007 we purchased the world’s top selling digital camera, the Canon EOS400D. We use this camera on all of our balloons to give our customers the highest quality of photography.

For those of you who are more technically minded we are using an f1.8 20mm prime lens to provide better quality images than the standard Canon 18-55mm lens. This way we can guarantee the most professional photograph we can be proud to hand over to our passengers.

If you would like to know more, or would like to make a booking you can do so on our website, or alternatively, you can call us on 01252 844222!

With so many balloon flights companies to choose from, what is it about Adventure Balloons that makes us so popular and why should we be your first choice? Let’s face it, if you’re booking a balloon flight that’s going to take you 3,000 foot in the air, you’ll want to check out the companies policies, track records, testimonials, reliability and more. We expect this and in fact recommend it, and are 100% confident you’ll be happy with what you find here at Adventure Balloons.  Before you browse through our site, we’ve listed in today’s article the benefits to using our company so that you can decide whether or not you’d like to visit the site or call our team.

• Fast Bookings – Not only can you call us to book your flight, but you can easily book online too where you will even be given the option to choose your voucher design. Vouchers ordered online for e-mail delivery will arrive instantly!
• Check Date Availability – Unlike many other balloon flights companies, you can check our flights schedule so that you can see how often we fly from each of our locations (Berkshire, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, London, Oxford, Surrey, Sussex and York)
• Low Prices - Book vouchers from as little as £89 – the best value balloon flight in the UK!
• Birthday Balloons – Enjoy special birthday flights in our one-of-a-kind Birthday hot air balloon which features our Adventure Balloons colours and a giant ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ message!
• Great Reputation – Many Adventure Balloons customers come from personal recommendation – check out our customer testimonials to see why!
• Flexible – Adventure Balloons is also able to cater for any special requirements you may have.
• Various Capacities – We have several balloons with capacities ranging from 4-16 passengers!

Adventure Balloons became so popular and renowned for their quality of service and eagerness to please that the only way left for them to continue growing was to create the group Balloons Over Britain. Balloons Over Britain has 10 member companies each offering flights in different locations across the UK. With over 70 different launch sites across Britain, and from Adventure Balloons humble beginnings, it has to be asked…why go anywhere else? So if Adventure Balloons do not cover the location you were after, take a look over at Balloons Over Britain where you will find a member company that does.

Are you looking for a new and exciting way to capture your audience’s attention? The best way to do this is to stand out from the crowd. To be different to your competitors gives you a unique selling point, it enables your audience to remember you. Sure, all advertising is good advertising, but if you use the same old approach, you will just blend into the crowd and become the same as all the rest. With a quirky slogan, a catchy tune and some clever marketing, you brands image could be the first thing to crop into potential customers minds when they’re shopping for your area of product or service.

Picture the bill board advert now; what kind of image is likely to draw in your audience base? Have you considered a hot air balloon? At Adventure Balloons, our baskets have recently been used for video and photography shoots for McCains Chips (three nuns floating over the roof tops) Sheila’s Wheels Car Insurance (Pink trim on the basket of course) and now it seems some of our baskets have aspirations to break into flim!

Just look at the image above, if you saw this spread across the typical 14” x 48” billboard, there’s no doubting it would draw you in! Well this is what music photographer Paul Heartfield thought when he wanted to do a photo shoot with The Leisure Society. After contacting us, to hire one of our balloon baskets, we were only too happy to help and with baskets of various sizes, accommodating the seven piece band was not a problem at all. All that was left to do, was combine all the band member on their available dates, with a beautiful blue sky and the perfect countryside setting! And as you can see from the photograph; mission accomplished!

Alternatively, you could always use our balloons to advertise your product, service or new feature by plastering it’s basket in a banner with your company colours, logo, or slogan? Better still, we could even have the balloon itself designed in the shape of your product. Nothing captures passes by more than a hot air balloon, wherever you are and no matter how much of a hurry you’re in, everyone will stop to look up! Research has found hot air balloon advertising as a very effective and cost effective method of marketing your business. Interested? Then why not give us a call on 01252 844222.

For more about Leisure Society try http://www.theleisuresociety.co.uk
and www.myspace.com/theleisuresociety

For band photography go to http://www.paulheartfield.com/

With the London 2012 Olympics fast approaching, unfortunately we will not be able to offer you the chance to enjoy a romantic hot air balloon flights over the UK’s Capital during 2012. Latest discussions with the Department of Transport have made it clear that because of the security arrangements both at launch sites and in London’s airspace required for the Queens Diamond Jubilee Celebrations and the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, we will not be able to take bookings for our Central London Hot Air Balloon Rides during the 2012 season. So if you were waiting for the thrill of seeing our beloved London from 3,000 feet in the air, you will now have to wait until 2013! Tickets for 2013 flights will go on sale in November 2012. So whatever anyone else tells you, you will not be able to see London from a balloon during 2012, unless from a very long way away!

Considering this news, it was a good job our 2011 London flights ended on such a high; we all remember the rather shoddy and un-summery weather we had during August, however our balloon flights over London had a rather spectacular finish! With so many factors to take into consideration including wind speed, visibility, precipitation and so on, it can be expected that flights will be cancelled and re-scheduled from time to time. But at Adventure Balloons our last 3 scheduled flights of the London season all went ahead as planned! When you factor into this that statistically a flight in most areas has about a 1 in 3 chance or better of going ahead each time, I’d say we got lucky! In fact you could say it was a minor miracle; London balloon flights require far more precise weather conditions and so you have more or less a 1 in 6 chance of your flight going ahead!

This luck even spread to our foreign tourists who were in the capital for just a few days, given them just one opportunity to take a flight. With passengers from Spain, Brazil and Saudi Arabia all flying on their first and only dates, I’d say we earned ourselves a shining review! However we did tell our lucky visitors not to tell their colleagues back home that London hot air balloon rides happen just like that, as we also had one passenger who had 33 attempts in 4 years before he was flown this June! It really is down to mother nature, and maybe a touch of the luck of the draw.

In January this year Adventure Balloons experienced the breathtaking experience of flying a balloon during some of the most beautiful weather conditions! With January 2012 fast approaching, we can only dream of having an equally amazing experience! We flew from France through the Mont Blanc Tunnel to Mondovi in the Piemonte region of Italy a place famous for its annual balloon festival which was being held. This part of Italy produces Barolo and Asti Supmante wines, delicious truffles and quality balsamic vinegar.

As the area lies between two mountain ranges, the winds tend to be very light. Thanks to the time of year, the beautiful landscape was sprinkled in snow making the buildings in the city sparkle and shimmer, a magical look that took our breath away. We flew with up to 30 other balloonists over the town and surrounding countryside and found that the Italians are extremely welcoming with a huge fondness for the Balloon Festival. Wherever you end up landing, you can be sure that you will be welcome and you could see balloons as far as the eye can see flying low among the roof tops for all the people to see.

It really was an experience like no other; in fact on one occasion we flew past a church tower as the midday bells were ringing, far too beautiful for words. Spotted by the bell ringer, every bell in the tower began to chime in an amazing peal; we’re still not sure whether this was to warn us off or to participate in our enjoyment!  The whole area was dotted with churches, we were bound to land near one, however our inspiration came from the Cathedral or “Sanctuary” at Vicoforte near Mondovi which has the largest elliptical dome in the world, or so we were told; what a sight it was!

If you’d like to enjoy Adventure Balloons wealth of experience, we are renowned for giving an experience second to none. What gives us our job satisfaction is tailor making every passengers balloon flight to be individual, stunning and ultimately a wonderful experience, one you will never forget. Perhaps you’d like more information? Simply browse our site where you can even book online, or call us on 01252 844222.