{"id":1716,"date":"2014-04-09T13:04:48","date_gmt":"2014-04-09T13:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/?p=1716"},"modified":"2014-04-09T13:56:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-09T13:56:12","slug":"balloon-pilots-pre-season-gathering-in-thornbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/balloon-pilots-pre-season-gathering-in-thornbury\/","title":{"rendered":"Balloon pilots&#8217; pre-season gathering in Thornbury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thornbury, England enjoyed the sights and sounds of a hot air balloon night glow when the town&#8217;s golf centre hosted a start-of-season gathering for pilots.<\/p>\n<p>The event was organised as a social get-together for balloonists but the night glow and fireworks display was also a thank-you to supporters and sponsors. A number of local families also went along, swelling the numbers watching the spectacle.<\/p>\n<p>Thornbury Balloon Meet was organised by former Castle School student Tom Gouder, who lives in the town and gained his own pilot&#8217;s licence when he was just 17.<\/p>\n<p>Now 22, he has flown in a number of countries and has been a regular at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta. He even taught his mum, Julie Searle, to fly after she caught the ballooning bug.<\/p>\n<p>Tom said the three-day event followed a smaller test run that was held last year.<\/p>\n<p>Although largely social, a couple of balloons did manage to fly on the opening day but poor weather grounded them for the rest of the gathering.<\/p>\n<p>Tom and his event manager, Sam Baker, now hope to be able to return next year.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;I&#8217;m trying to promote the sport, especially among young people and women, and the golf centre is keen to have another event.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Although there wasn&#8217;t much flying, we had organised some fun golf matches and other activities, including a talk by balloonist Ian Martin about flying in Burma.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazetteseries.co.uk\/news\/11135553.Balloon_pilots_meet_in_Thornbury_for_pre_season_gathering_and_night_glow\/\">Gazette Series<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thornbury, England enjoyed the sights and sounds of a hot air balloon night glow when the town&#8217;s golf centre hosted a start-of-season gathering for pilots. The event was organised as a social get-together for balloonists but the night glow and fireworks display was also a thank-you to supporters and sponsors. A number of local families [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,24],"tags":[1070,1073,1071,1072,1068,1069],"class_list":["post-1716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiesta","category-video","tag-castle-school","tag-ian-martin","tag-julie-searle","tag-sam-baker","tag-thornbury","tag-tom-gouder","post_format-post-format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/10003391_481302241996989_1251420388_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3RIC2-rG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1721,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions\/1721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}