How better to enjoy Scotland’s lush landscapes than from a hot-air balloon?
Louise Gilbert meets Graeme Houston of Scotair Balloons.
Imagine being handed a hot air balloon on your birthday and not having a licence to fly it. An unlikely scenario? Well that’s just what happened to Graeme Houston one auspicious day in 1988, a day that the winds changed the direction of his life forever.
Today, Graeme is owner and operator of Scotair Balloons, Scotland’s first hot air balloon flight company. Based in Lanarkshire, close to the quaint country village of Biggar, it seems the perfect place to float off above Scotland’s green valleys.
It wasn’t hard for Graeme to pick a location. “Scotland’s home, so I knew Scotair had to be based here. I laid out all the Ordnance Survey maps for Scotland, and looked long and hard at every single area. There are less restrictions, danger areas and power lines here, so I started to fly the balloon in this part of the world to test it out. Not only is it amazingly scenic, but it’s also very rural. I totally fell for the whole area”.
Looking at the surrounding countryside, it’s easy to see why Graeme was immediately smitten with this place. Scotair Balloons fly over the Clyde Valley with the river snaking below and parting the surrounding woodlands. As the balloon rises to 2,500 feet, the rolling hills drop away, the contours flatten out and the landscape becomes a patchwork quilt of green and gold. An average flight will cover a distance of up to 15 miles, and takes about one hour. Graeme describes the experience:
“Very tranquil, very peaceful and relaxing. It’s surreal really, and there’s no sensation of movement at all. You can’t feel anything. You just move with the wind. There’s not even a breeze on you face. It’s very still, no turbulence, and you just drift”.
In the early days of the business, Graeme thought he was doing something wrong. Ascending into the sky, the excited chatter of the passengers would evaporate and silence would settle in the basket. It took him a while to realise that his clients had simply entered a blissful state of quiet wonderment.
Graeme has treated hundreds of people to many such relaxing hours, hovering above Scotland, absorbing her delicious views. But the thing to remember about ballooning is that you are always at the mercy of the winds. It is mother nature who is ultimately in control.
“The winds can get tricky sometimes,” says Graeme, explaining that helium balloons are used before every flight to test wind direction and speed which helps in plotting the course.
“This area is unforgiving if you make a mistake with the winds or the weather. If you head into the hills, you can’t change your mind and come back. Once a balloon is heading away it’s off, and there is nothing you can do about it. So I’m always very cautious of where the winds are going, and what speed they’re moving at. If it’s a fast wind, I’ve got to really work my socks off, especially with the delay.”
The balloons are so large – up to 120 feet tall and 90 feet wide – that there is a 15 to 20-second delay between any action the pilot takes with the burners and the heat reaching the top of the balloon. Graeme notes,
“This means you’ve got to be thinking well ahead of yourself all the time. It can sometimes be hell on a stick. The pressure is intense if the wind is fast.”
At the other extreme, there are days when there is little or no wind.
“On a hot day, thermals will develop, and the fields cool down later in the evening. But as the day progresses, the heat intensifies within buildings. If it’s a still day, the air circulates around the buildings and will create a bit of a vortex”, Graeme explains.
“There was one particular day when we experienced just that. I had tried to fly over Skipton, but I ended up stuck above the town. No matter what I did, I wasn’t able to clear the town. I’d head out, towards the last row of houses, think I was clear, and then at the last minute the air would spiral me round and pull me back in. It just kept doing this for the whole flight. I was trapped with no escape route”.
All this, with a basket full of people. Graeme continues.
“I was running short on fuel and looking around for a place to land. All I could see was a school, and I thought, “I’ll have to dump it in there.” We came over a row of terraced houses and there was a steep drop into the school playground. I pulled the deflation system, told everyone to hold on tight, and we dropped onto the pavement, right at the side of the building. Another two or three feet along and I would have gone straight through the roof!”
A pavement is not the only distinctive place Graeme has landed. When he’s in the air, he is always on the lookout for a decent piece of paddock with enough room to deflate the enormous balloon, preferably without pigs or sheep, which are unsurprisingly spooked by space-like objects descending on them.
“On one flight,” Graeme recalls, “I looked down and saw what looked like a big field”. Perfect? Not quite. It turned out that Graeme had descended next to Highland Spring Mineral Water’s secret spring!
“There was a huge uproar, and I was told I shouldn’t be landing in their top-secret place. I said well. It’s not a secret anymore, is it?” Graeme laughs.
Such clandestine places are not marked on maps, for obvious reasons, and this has resulted in some experiences that could come straight out of Mission Impossible.
“I actually landed in a military zone once,” Graeme confides.
“It looked an industrial zone to me, with a big field, but no sooner had I landed than a team of cars zoomed in around us, blue lights flashing everywhere. I got into a bit of bother that day, lots of questions from the authorities thinking that I was spying or had some other ulterior motive. I had to laugh. The balloon is so slow moving. Don’t bother to send a team of cars boys, just send a bike!” he jokes.
“It was quite an interesting experience though, getting taken into a wee room and being questioned by uniforms about all sorts”. Just as well Graeme has such a philosophical approach to life. But then, if you spend most of your days floating serenely above the earth’s surface, a bit of excitement on land is probably a welcome change.
When he first became involved in hot air ballooning, Graeme had no idea that he was destined for so many unique adventures.
“At that time”, Graeme admits, “I was not interested in hot air balloons at all”. He worked at Glasgow Airport for Loganair, in a position Graeme describes as ‘general dogsbody’. His dream, back then, was far removed from anything to do with flying.
“Getting into ballooning was purely an accident. I was trying to be a pop star. I’d leave work and drive straight to the rehearsal rooms to meet the rest of the band. We used Wet Wet Wet’s recording studio in Glasgow.”
“Our stuff was played on the radio and it was a really exciting time”.
Exciting it may have been, but it didn’t compare to Graeme’s first flight in the Loganair hot air balloon. Graeme initially boarded the balloon with an unusual agenda.
“It was a way of getting out of some work, maybe impressing some girls. And it worked, I found my wife!” Graeme met Lisa when she was a receptionist in a balloon factory.
“As it turned out, that first flight was brilliant, intoxicating”.
Graeme smiles at the recollection.
“The pilot offered to teach me to fly, and I jumped at the chance”.
But only after a few weeks of lessons, Graeme received a phone call from the pilot. “He told me he was leaving Loganair and had been advised to clear out his desk. He said, ‘The jobs all yours’, and gave me all the log books. It was great, my 24th birthday and I had a brand new balloon to fly”.
An enviable position to be in, but there was still one major problem. Graeme didn’t have his pilot’s licence. A determined man, he wasn’t going to let that stop him.
“I went flat out – every opportunity I could get, I went flying to build up my hours”. Within a short space of time, Graeme was licensed to fly high across Scotland’s magnificent landscape.
Graeme flew with Loganair for a couple of years before securing a job with a balloon company in the Yorkshire Dales.
“My stint in the Dales was an amazing learning curve and a hell of a lot of fun. I’ll never forget it”.
It was during that time that Graeme began to think about his future. The safaris in Kenya have the worlds largest ballooning operations and Graeme considered moving out there. However, he recognised a niche in the market much closer to home. People were driving down from Scotland to fly with him in Yorkshire. He felt confident that he could use this to his advantage.
“At the time I started up my company, I knew it wouldn’t fail. It’s a strange thing, but I knew there was no possibility that it wouldn’t work, because there was nobody in Scotland doing this”.
Since forming Scotair Balloons, Graeme has flown internationally in Italy, France, Germany, California, Portugal and Spain, but nothing compares to flying in Scotland.
“It beats anything. In some countries, all you can see below are houses”.
Scotland certainly provides varied scenery, from bubbling streams and rolling hills to historic castles and country villages. Graeme declares that, without a doubt, his favourite place to fly in over Loch Lomond, which he describes as “stunning and totally picturesque”.
Graeme confesses one of his dreams:
“I’d like to fly across the north of Scotland and drift over the jaggy mountains of the Highlands, to land here in the fields of the Clyde Valley”.
What of his dreams to be a pop star? Well, they haven’t been blown away altogether. The two drum kits tucked away in his garage are testament to that.
