it has a kind of a magical
gravity-defying feeling about it
you can fly much more law near the
ground and who can even talk to people
on the ground and you're going slow
enough to to appreciate what is floating
past you I'm Don Cameron and we're in
the balloon factory here in Bristol
Cameron balloons we do special shaped
balloons and we can make almost any
shape animals the most fun I suppose we
built all sorts of animals and dinosaurs
and squirrels and almost everything we
did build a Darth Vader one we were
privileged to have that actually come
back to Bristol to fly in the the
balloon fiesta this year I was born in
Scotland there I grew up in shaolin's
and and in stemple and near clucksten
and eventually went to Glasgow
University I usually put it down to
drink because ballooning started from a
conversation in the bar it was a group
of us from the gliding club who decided
to build our own balloon and we built
the first modern hot-air balloon this
side of the Atlantic it was called the
Bristol Bell and it we started work in
1966 and didn't finish it until the
summer of 1967 in the early days we we
built the balloons in the basement of a
house I had in
in Bristol and that went on first of all
employing one person too so and I did
every other job in the business that
wasn't sewing and gradually we built up
building balloons over the years hasn't
changed a great deal it's still done
with sewing machines is still done with
a light fabric this is the main sewing
floor the panels are cut downstairs and
they come up here they're all marked too
to show which bit needs to sort of which
other bit you can see here the seam with
its two lines of stitching it is it
quite a big jigsaw when it's a special
shaped balloon they have to be
particularly careful to get all the bits
of the right bits together here you see
people packing a balloon into a bag
they're having to work very hard to get
it in there but that looks like it's a
big one it's quite heavy people
sometimes asked us what shape would you
not do in a hot-air balloon and I have
to say that a pedal bicycle would be
very difficult anything that has a bit
of bulk to it a bit of shape a bit of
volume we wouldn't admit defeat on so
this is used for cutting out special
panels it's often used for cutting out
panels used for artwork and lettering on
the balloon the critical problem about
designing special shaped balloons is you
can design the shape but you have to be
able to flatten it out to give the flat
pattern that you cut out on the cutting
table one lady sewing will have be in
charge of one balloon so they follow it
from start to finish so it does give
them the fun that when they see a flyer
they can say I made that it's totally
different from being in an aeroplane
flying a hot-air balloon is a kind of
magical experience but it's it's hard to
explain you you really have to try it
you