Читать книгу 101 Romantic Weekends in Europe - Sarah Woods - Страница 28

CONTACT Aquitaine Montgolfières Tel: +33 5 59 66 59 22 / +33 6 80 34 30 34 Email: aquitaine.montgolfieres@wanadoo.fr www.aquitaine-montgolfieres.fr

Expect to pay around 300 euros for a romantic airborne soirée-for-two, with Champagne and a hand-tied floral bouquet available on request for an extra special touch.

Hot air ballooning enjoys a storied tradition in The Pyrenees, offering some of Europe’s finest panoramas against a magnificent backdrop of jagged mountains. Sweeping plateaux, undulating countryside, high bluffs and ragged spits boast extraordinary flora and fauna. Innumerable and large rocky protrusions run parallel to the spiny ridges while the rolling folds of the landscape form crumbled meadows in the flower-scattered foothills beneath. Light gusts offer the perfect propulsion for balloon travel, aiding Jesus Fernandez Duro to make the first balloon-powered crossing of the Pyrénées in 1906. Today, the grounds of the beautiful, vine-cloaked 15thcentury Cistercian Abbaye de l’Escaladieu serves as a romantic launch point for balloon explorations of the mountains, allowing a scenic ascent over the confluence of the Luz and Aroos Rivers near the castle of Mauvezin. Getting off the ground requires a pilot to connect propane tanks to the burners. Once the valve is switched on, a flame jettisons into the silken envelope as it slowly inflates to a swell. Ropes untied, a bumpy take-off preludes a weightless rise skyward, accompanied by a gaseous roar as the balloon enters its timeless, floating state. High above the ancient pilgrims’ route to Santiago de Compostela, the romance of a weightless world unfolds as do the gasp-inducing views.

Balloon travel provides the ultimate in joyously haphazard romantic journeying, embodying an exotic, unsystematic mode of exploration driven by a frisky breeze. Although a skilled pilot can influence the height of a hot-air balloon within centimetres, it is the wind that dictates direction. Few travel plans are as romantically fickle as those that rely on the whim of Mother Nature – and it is this liberating casting of fate that forms the bedrock of ballooning’s romantic appeal. Skim across wooded Alpine thickets and wind-chiselled limestone crags at a leisurely 25 kph (16 mph). Cross boulder-strewn streams, rustic mountain villages, ancient Ibex trails and stone ledges covered in creeping scrub. When it is time to swap a cloudy puffball for solid ground, brace yourself for a jolt as you return to earth in a tufted meadow.

Up, up and away: enjoy a romantic airbourne cruise over the French countryside.