Bristol International Kite Festival

Saturday 2nd & Sunday 3rd September 2000

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Peter Lynn

Peter Lynn, one of the greatest kite flying pioneers, was amongst the specially invited fliers from around the world who came to Bristol 2000. He is pictured here (with helpers) flying some of his huge inflatable kites. These dominated the Bristol kite festival skyline, they were so large that you couldn't miss them!

Peter joined in the mass fly-in towards the end of Saturday, which was on a "Nautical" theme. He flew a giant red squid and was joined by other kite fliers, including Martin Lester, with mermaids, fish, a shark, a dolphin, male and female divers (one entitled "Lady Godiver"), a penguin, lobster, octopus.. the list goes on! It was a very enjoyable and amusing display, particularly when some of the bigger kites became entangled and dropped down onto the crowd!

Invited fliers from Holland

Also on the invited fliers list were a Dutch kite group who flew these beautiful Circoflex kites (one with a bird kite flying inside the ring) and these amazing kite stacks. The stack of red kites pictured (centre) below contains 270 kites on 400 metres of line. The stack of white kites contains 100 kites, and is on 200 metres of line. The stacks belong to John Verheij and Herman van den Broek, and once held the world record for the largest kite. This record now sits with Peter Lynn, his "Megabite" is currently the largest kite in the world.

AKF (Avon Kite Fliers)

The Avon Kite Fliers did a splendid job organising the various events that went on throughout the day, including the fly-ins and demonstrations of artistic kites, large inflatables and playsails. The pictures speak for themselves.

Later on...

Later on, when all the public had left the site, the kite fliers had time to relax - eat, drink and have fun. An auction was held to raise money for next year's event. This was well attended and contained some very desirable items, including a limited edition Blade power kite, framed photographs, t-shirts, kite pins, a pre-release model of the new Dot Matrix (3/4 size version of the Matrix kite), and other items such as bottles of fizzy drink and reels of 30lb polyester line...

Much fun was had, much money raised and after the auction had finished we were all treated to a fireworks display, with Anne Harris' Merlin the magician inflatable watching over proceedings. A spectacular end to a spectacular day!

Bristol Kite Festival links:

Avon Kite Fliers Bristol page.

Directions to the kite festival.