We took a trip down to Portsmouth to see the annual kite festival that they hold. It is actually on Southsea Common and attracts both a lot of spectators but also participants from across the continent. I saw performers from Belgium and Switzerland, and I believe there were others. It is a free event on the common, so you are able to walk around and see the different elements at your leisure.
We had gone to a kite festival in San Ramon when we lived in California and I was interested to see how they compared. This was a larger event with more to see but the San Ramon event was in a more enclosed area which made it feel more involving. Both had their pluses and minuses. There were two areas enclosed for performers. One was for large shapes that were tethered to a spot and floated above the event. The other was sometimes used for free flying but also was used for performers.
The performers are always worth a watch. Whether it is an individual with a routine or a group of flyers in coordinated displays, the skill and controllability is impressive. I used to do a lot of kite flying and did once fly a Revolution kite a friend of mine had. It was incredibly agile and could be manoeuvred in multiple ways, but it was also super twitchy which made it quite a handful. I see that design is still in use but there are now even more advanced shapes in use. The skill of the teams as they move around each other and overlap their lines to make all sorts of manoeuvres work is so impressive.
The free flying shapes were so varied in both concept and size. It took me a while to realise that they often had a separate kite flying above them that was used to support them rather than being fully self-supporting. There might be more than one shape on each line. A great white shark and a blue whale were competing for space. Betty Boop was with Felix the Cat. Other creatures that were the result of the imagination of the designers were also up there.
Our favourite was a dragon. It was designed in such a way that the lines to the head were separate from those for the body. Consequently, as it moved back and forth in the breeze, the head would respond to any changes before the body. This made it look more like it was deliberately changing direction. Such a clever piece of design.
The wind was pretty steady on the day (and the conditions rather overcast which had not been the forecast), but it did sometimes drop and also change direction. This meant that some of the shapes would drift out of the arena and over the spectators. This was not an issue until the wind dropped and there were a few occasions when they came down on the people outside the arena. Not a big deal but still rather amusing to watch as the size of these constructions become apparent when next to people. Probably got their attention too.
It was an interesting event and I’m glad we went. It was certainly popular with a ton of people there and a lot of the kids there had acquired their own kites. I bet the kite sellers did good business. I wonder how long they will be played with.
This aviation moment was a bit of a last-minute thing. We don’t live terribly far from Popham’s airfield, and I have driven past it more time than I can recall including when travelling to visit family in Andover before we ended up living in Hampshire. However, I had never actually been to the airfield before. I had seen that they were having a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the first use of the field, but I did have other stuff going on at home. When I had finished that, I knew I needed to get a bike ride in as part of my ongoing (if feeble) preparation for the charity ride I had coming up. I decided to ride up to Popham and back and swing by the fly in.
The weather was really nice and there seemed to be a ton of planes that had made the trip in to join the celebrations. The road into the airfield goes right under the western approach end and I did stop there on my bike for a while to watch the arriving and departing planes. Then I rode into the airfield itself and had a brief wander around. There were plenty of people out walking amongst the parked planes and, if I hadn’t been in cycling shoes and pushing the bike, I would have had a longer time exploring. Instead, it was a brief stopover before continuing my ride. I hope they had a successful day.
