Air Festivals

Celebrate the element of Air within your local environment helping to raise awareness of humanities impact on the world and what we can all do to minimise/change it. Air is the sky, the atmosphere. It is our breath, it is the element we communicate through, it is inspiration and imagination... Let us know what it means to you and how you have celebrated it!

23rd February 2008

Celebrations at the White Horse
Uffington, Wiltshire

The day was fairly bright with some cloud and a nice healthy breeze, perfect for kite flying. We all met in the car park for around 2:15pm and headed up to the castle, always a place that has seemed to me to be a cathedral to the sky and the dead. Most of us that gathered hadn't flown kites for several years and it took a few minutes to work out how to untangle and assemble our kites.

It soon became clear that the breeze was much stronger than it had seemed on leaving home... Our kites leapt aloft, spinning with the wind, straining at the strings as they attempted to join the play of the wind, free of the tethers to the ground. All around was the song of skylarks.

The view out across the Thames floodplain to the distant Cotswolds was, as always, stunning.  There were five wind turbines in the distance, a new addition to the landscape since the last time I was here, a welcome alternative to the cooling towers of Didcot power station.

A great time was had by all, trying to stay warm and keep the kites intact in the blustery chill wind that blew across Uffington castle. Two out of our three kites were snapped by the force of the wind, giving me even more respect for the tiny skylarks singing their hearts out on the wing watching the crazy humans struggling with fabric, sticks and string below.