Hot air balloons: Try to avoid screaming like a baby as you soar up to 3,000ft

I arrived in Italy in the rather peculiar situation of being the owner of a hot-air balloon but never having been in one

Up and away: hot air balloons in Warstein, Germany (Getty Images)

I’m in Italy, in Piedmonte, staying in a lovely little town called Mondovi while I attempt to learn to fly a hot-air balloon. I’m not learning in my balloon; I’m the guest of a gentleman called Andrew Holly, a man who appears to have more balloons than is strictly necessary for one individual.

The original plan was to slowly learn my new hobby back at home in the Cotswolds but I need a minimum of 16 hours’ flying time before I can even think about getting a pilot’s licence and it quickly became apparent that this would mean a lot of time standing in English fields at dawn waiting for the wind to drop while attempting to persuade friends to get out of bed and drive the recovery vehicle.

So Andrew suggested I join him in Mondovi as the town, being sheltered on almost three sides by the Alps, is particularly blessed with the weather conditions needed to balloon.

So I’m here for 10 days’ tuition in between eating and drinking my bodyweight in fresh pasta, pizza and Rossinis. Fortunately, I have chosen to be a hot-air balloonist and not a gas balloonist. The latter is the one where you need to chuck ballast out of the balloon, as it gets progressively less buoyant. Anybody flying with me in one of those would view me as an impediment to prolonged flight and would be seriously considering chucking me overboard.

I arrived in Italy in the rather peculiar situation of being the owner of a hot-air balloon but never having been in one. There was a little part of me that was rather nervous. I had vivid nightmares in which I howled like a demented baby, crying and clinging to the wicker wastepaper bin that we fly around in, while demanding to be brought back to terra firma.

As it was, I absolutely loved my first flight. We floated low and slow over the red-tiled rooftops of Mondovi before hovering over the tips of trees and spotting wild boar and deer in the forests below. It was magical.

When, on my second flight, we soared up to 3,000ft, I did feel a slight urge to head down the screaming baby route. Fortunately, I managed to conceal my panic by muttering admiring things about the clouds and not looking down too much. As my flight hours increase however, I am getting a little calmer at altitude; you can’t beat the fantastic feeling of floating low over the Italian countryside like some voluminous peeping Tom.

On Friday, it being an Italian holiday (as are most days) we lifted off with several other balloons. I wondered to myself what the collective noun for a group of hot-air balloons might be? If there is one I couldn’t find it. Some on-line suggestions were great – “A Drift, a Floatilla, a Dolly Parton …” My suggestion would be “A Burn of Balloons” – maybe this term could be my first humble gift to the ballooning community? Either that or the appalling local headlines when I slam “Patches” into power-lines and knock out Cheltenham’s electricity supply.