Nous sommes montgolfieristes - ballooning in France

National Review, Sept 21, 1984 by Pricilla Buckley

The SNAPPY silver flight bags with the sturdy navy straps arrive, prosaically, via UPS. Stamped on their sides is "Buddy Bombard's Great Balloon Adventure." Now it's concrete. Two weeks from today, my sister Jane will be celebrating her sixtieth birthday in the balmy skies of the Chateau country in France. The trip calls for six full days in the Loire Valley, staying for three nights at the Domaine des Hauts de Loire, near Blois, and another three at the Domaine de Beauvois near Tours. In the mornings there will be unhurried, privately guided tours of the great chateaux, followed by exquisite leisurely lunches with the best wines the area can offer. Then each evening we will fly our montgolfieres, which is what the French call hot-air balloons, after the brothers Montgolfier (Jacques Etienne and Joseph Michel), who built and flew the first balloon two hundred years ago. (And when was the last time you flew a wright?) The trip, I'll confess right now, is furiously expensive, and worth every penny.

Two grey vans pick up nine members of our party in front of the Crillon in Paris one bright June morning. Gerard and Irene Brant, who live in Geneva, will meet us at the Domaine. The hotel is small, set in a park complete with pond and swans, and understatedly elegant. We have a welcoming Royal Kir (champagne and cassis) on the terrace, and then lunch--but not, on this trip, ever, a quick lunch. It's nouvelle cuisine, served under the trees at tables for four: cold fresh salmon, gigot, cheese, fraises des bois in a light custard, cookis, coffee, chocolates. The wines are a Sancerre and a Montlouis. Glasses stay filled unless one objects--vehemently.

Just about then Buddy arrives. He was not expected. He comes in, gives Jane and me a big abrazo--he's an old friend--greets the rest of the party, tells us he will fly us tonight, and answers dozens of questions about his operation. Buddy's been in the tourist ballooning business in Europe for eight years now (The Bombard Society, 6727 Curran Street, McLean, Va. 22101) and he runs three- and six-day trips all summer long in Burgundy and the Loire, and six-day trips in the fall in Austria, near Salzburg. He now owns 25 balloons, all specially designed for comfort and pleasure. The montgolfiere we will board tonight is nine stories high and holds 160,000 cubic feet of (hot) air. It's equipped with what Buddy calls a "turning window," and arrangement of flaps that permits the pilot to rotate the balloon itself, and the basket attached to it, around the column of hot air that holds the whole thing up. This makes for variety. One moment you are looking ahead at a little village in the distance, the next moment looking back at the river you've just crossed. Buddy has also developed a "cow burner" that heats the balloon with liquid propane instead of propane gas, a procedure that considerably lowers the decibel count. This keeps cattle from stampeding and sometimes breaking legs, which farmers don't like and Buddy finds expensive. The woven wicker basket has six toe-holds that are immensely helpful in the often ungainly business of getting aboard in a hurry. Especially if you are ladies of a certain age.

The best time to fly is in the two hours before sunset, so at 6:30 that evening we take off for the Chateau de Fresne, owned by the Marquis de Brante. We sip champagne on the front steps as the boys in the chase vans--the Redshirts, we call them, from the red shirts they wear with their khakis--unload the two baskets from the trailers and stretch the balloons out in a long straight line in the courtyard.

Buddy has told us that there isn't a farmer in Burgundy--or the world--so crusty as to resent the descent into his field of a baby-blue balloon festooned with tulips, daffodils, and butterflies. And we see what he means as the powerful fans blow air into the balloons and they start to undulate and sway. Jane lights her last cigarette. "Don't smoke in a balloon," is the rule. "The ash you drop may be yourself." The heater is lit, and now the propane flame whooshes into the balloon, heating the air, and it starts slowly to rise. We crowd around, because when the time comes and it is ready to go, it is going to go, and you'd better be aboard or it's a demain.

The balloons lift off in unison. We fly over the chateau and the outbuildings--stables, dovecote, orangerie. It's a quite evening, a light breeze, and soon Buddy puts down on a country lane within three feet of a parked car, the driver of which has more confidence in our pilot than, at that moment, his jolly crew has. We will know better two nights later when, in a tight situation, with the light fading and a scarcity of places to land, Michel, our French pilot, orders us to get out in a hurry. Which we do. Our basket is turned on its side. And Buddy lands his balloon on it, right bloody-smack on it.

Tonight an old farmer, suspenders stretched tight across his belly, comes up to the balloon and shakes hands all around. Where have we come from? he wants to know, and where are we going? We answer the first, but can't the second. And we're off again to smiles and waves.