The Bedford International Kite Festival is the closest kite festival to us, yet this year is the first time we have visited this popular event.

With fliers from across Europe and as far away as Vietnam the festival boasts an impressive line up of guests and kites.  The festival is held in a busy town centre  park next to the River Ouse.  The park is the venue of choice for most of the major events in Bedford and so is well known locally, this seems to guarantee a huge number of spectators for the kite festival.  In fact, with great weather this year, the only down side is that the park is surrounded by very tall trees and buildings resulting in no wind below 100 ft.

Interestingly, the rather challenging flying conditions only seem to make the fliers work harder, individually and together.  This year was no exception, with the kite after kite coming out of the bag in order to put on a show (although there were more kites on the floor than in the air).    The kite aspect of the event is organised by Malcolm Goodman who seamlessly blends traditional Vietnamese kites with modern inflatables and everything in between.

The sport kites at this event were provided by The Flying Squad and the Ex Grads.  With no separate field for sport kite demos the teams had to work with the space available which made for some interesting flying.  Fortunately with the challenging wind conditions the single kite fliers didn’t mind a 5 minute break every now and then!

Thanks to all for a very enjoyable weekend.  Hope you enjoyed our home town.