Being bank holiday, it was off to Portsmouth Kite festival, probably the largest kite festival in Southern England. With a leisurely start (no mad packing session trying to get everything to fit in the car) and apart from a delay on the A3 (I should have taken the M3) we got to Portsmouth in plenty of time and setting up was merely a case of parking up the van; Southsea Common is so flat we didn’t even need the leveling ramps.

As is normal at Portsmouth, Saturday and Sunday were hard work flying the large show kites for the public, whilst Monday is a more relaxing day flying our own kites just for the fun of it.

Although the wind on Saturday was on the light side the bears flew and got a mention in the main arena, and most of the invited flyers flew moderate sized inflatables and show kites. Sunday proved the exact opposite with the wind building to such a strength that all the kites had to come down. Whilst taking Cat in the Hat down we had his brand new 500lb lifter line snap, Dick Abbs lost his Fuerta Rok over the roof tops, Martin Blais lost one of his Sharks (though someone returned it) when the screw link holding it on straightened out and there were various other mishaps on the field during the day.

We ended up doing a couple of BBQs, Sunday’s being to use up the leftovers from Saturday; many thanks to Dan and Paddy for the hospitality and to Tom Abbs for the cooking. As has become the norm this year we had a stream of visitors to the van, some of them regulars other new visitors but regular readers plus a few new comers who are likely to become followers.

Having nearly lost our flags and pole sleeve on the Sunday, on Monday I tried the leaping dolphin on ;my 3m banner pole, and he works much better on the pole than on a kite line. As a test I stripped away most of his bridle with no adverse effect, so a pod of dolphins is back on the cards but this time on banner poles rather kite line which actually may be more effective.