Dunstable Downs Kite Festival

Sunday 27th July 2003

Location: Dunstable Downs, nr Dunstable, Bedfordshire
Organised by: Dunstable Kites

Doug Woods of Dunstable Kites was more than a little worried when he arrived at Dunstable Downs at 8am on the morning of the Kite Festival. The mist was low, the sky was a dark shade of grey and the rain was falling. Oh dear.

However, by the time we arrived at 10am, the skies were starting to clear and the sun was breaking through. The day turned out to be gloriously warm and sunny, with not a spot of rain, despite all the gloomy forecasts! The wind was good, although a little strong at times, averaging 10mph but one windmeter we saw had measured a gust of 25mph!

There were plenty of kites to be seen over the Downs, and plenty of spectators here for this popular festival. There seemed to be more space allocated to car parking this year, which was patrolled by the local Police Cadets who did a good job.

Demonstrations and displays throughout the day kept the crowds entertained. The Great Ouse Kite Flyers were doing teddy bear dropping at the edge of the single-line arena, whilst the main arena was kept busy with The Flying Squad, Carl & James Robertshaw, Team Spectrum, Brian Cantle (Darkstar) and Gary Tyrrell (showing how to fly traction kites) amongst others.

The general consensus of the day was that it had been fantastic, nobody could quite believe that the weather could turn out to be so good after such a poor start! Aeolian's Mum came along and thoroughly enjoyed her first kite festival. She even got chatting to someone on her train home on Monday, who had been to the kite festival too and had thought it was amazing! Small world...

So it just goes to show, you can't always believe the weathermen. If we had, we might not have experienced this great kite festival. Here are the photographs to prove it!

Natalie Woodward flying the Birdman	Roks in the sky	Colourful hexagonal kite
Happy Circoflex flyer		Flying Squad flags
'Flying Squad Corner'	The Squad in formation
Doug Woods of Dunstable Kites watches Hezz flying Raymond		Benson Gemini

Birdman by George Peters	Genki with long tails	The Flying Squad
Starfish by Rolf Zimmermann	Delta kite with tails	Female Diver by Martin Lester

The frog's wondering how Natalie's legs can fly with a plaster cast...	Footballers legs amuse the crowd	Team Spectrum's Animal Football
Stack of Rainbow Flexifoils	Philip Le Riche flies his Snowflake kite
Bruno flying a stack of stunt deltas	Busy on the Downs	Teddy bear dropping by the Great Ouse Kite Flyers
Delta serpents flying high in the sky		James Robertshaw & Dinah
Carl Robertshaw	"Hey! Who put those kites there?!"	'Stealth' trike

Links:

Dunstable Kites

Great Ouse Kite Flyers

Team Spectrum

The Flying Squad

Carl Robertshaw's KiteStudio

Philip Le Riche's Kite Zoo

National Trust