Balloon chasing!

Today I was off work to celebrate Keith's birthday. Before the children went to school he opened his presents and cards and I ran Sophie in this morning to give him a break from all the traffic!

I can't say we had a very exciting day as we spent the morning doing house and garden chores - namely pruning our Virginia Creeper which has crept right up to the roof eaves and curled itself around our satellite dish. Keith also went up the ladders and gave our front windows a good clean...we know how to celebrate!

Today started off very misty but the sun broke through and the afternoon was glorious - the perfect early Autumn day. After school, when Sophie and I were watching a film we'd recorded, we saw something very strange in the sky, quite a way away. From our house it looked like a huge Alien Starship as the sky was still a bit misty so with the children I jumped into my car to go and investigate!

We drove almost to the village of Hannington and parked the car on a farm track, From here it was a bit nearer but it still looked very weird indeed! We realised it was a hot air balloon (what a shame it wasn't an Alien invasion...) but it wasn't until I uploaded the photos to the computer that I realised it was an Aston Martin balloon!

Well, I love Aston Martin (I'll probably - no definitely! - never own one), and it was very impressive indeed. While we were taking photos and watching it we saw the balloon recovery vehicle go past and we hoped it would go down near us. It was such a strange shape and although we've seen weirdly-shaped balloons at the festival that's held in Northampton every year, it was a surprise to see this on a Tuesday evening!

I took some more photos of the countryside as we watched...

The spire of Walgrave church

In the evening we all went to the pub for dinner and had a lovely meal to celebrate Keith's special day. It was a great ending to a very enjoyable Tuesday!