The man who planted trees

For Cat's 30th I got tickets for a few plays from York theatre royal's Takeover 09.On Tuesday we saw the first of the plays, The Man Who Planted Trees.

At first I was a little apprehensive, I knew this was a family play (hell it involved puppets), but the crowd was decidedly... young.

I shouldn't have been worried! The play was utterly beautiful, a wonderful little ecological tale performed brilliantly by the actors/puppeteers involved. They had a fantastic combination of a lovely tale and plenty of silly comedy to keep even the attention of even the shortest of attention spans (I'm talking about the kids', not mine).

Young or old, I definately think you should go see this, especially if you can take some young kids with you. :D

The stuff of nightmares

Teletubbies and left 4 dead mashup.

So very very wrong

Balloon pictures

Photo of one of the first balloons to go up.

Unfortunately ours didn't go up quite so gracefully. the woman in front of us on our side of the basket really struggled to get over the edge of the basket and took ages to climb in. I'd only just climbed in when the pilot shouted for everyone to sit down and grab the handles and it tipped over! It then righted itself briefly, before tipping over again. Felt a little squashed with two people on top of me! At this point poor Cat had had to get clear and was worried it was going to take off without her! Luckily the pilot got in control and everyone else got in, and the balloon behaved itself after that!

Fantastic view of York including the minster

We saw quite a lot we recognised. We flew east from York, and spotted York's maize maze which was fun as we'd only just visited that a month or two ago. Could confirm that yup, it really is shaped like an astronaut. Schools are especially fun to spot as you get to see all the patterns in the playground. Oh and there was a football pitch at one point with lots of tiny dots chasing a tinier one :D

More of the view

The most stunning thing about flying in a balloon is the absolute silence (other than the roar of the burners every couple of minutes or so). It really is peaceful.

All the fields looked like a fantastic patchwork :D

Our less than graceful landing :)

The landing was fun, didn't realise they came in at quite as high a horizontal speed as they do! slid along the stubble field we landed in for quite a while before gently tipping over :D

Definitely recommend taking a balloon flight! It's a fantastic experience.

Ballooning adventure :)

Had an ace trip on a balloon this afternoon / evening!

Will fill in the blanks tomorrow, as am a bit tired this evening, but for now I will just say: scary take off, blissful journey, comical landing, tasty champagne :)