Bristol Balloon Festival 2019

It's brilliant, we usually do the early morning rise as it's not so busy - if you have kids and you don't want to do the whole fairground thing you can leave before the fairground opens if you like.

You can park at the site itself, you book online. We've done both parking, the normal parking and the more expensive premium parking, the premium parking is closer to all the attractions but the queues to get in were quite long, we expected them to be shorter than they were when we did the normal parking the year before, and were surprised that we queued for longer at the premium parking. If you do the early morning rise you can park all day if you choose to. Bear in mind that the rise only goes ahead if the weather is ok, the lift offs are all dependent on the weather, and I don't think you get a refund if you don't go unless you pay extra for insurance.

The ground is quite hilly so I would say trainers are a must, and it is a bit of a walk down from the normal parking area to the attractions, although first thing in the morning it isn't so busy so you can park at the front of the car park. If you are doing the early morning rise leave plenty of time to get there, park and walk down to the arena before it starts.

There is an evening night glow as well. If you do go and stay all day then the queues to leave can be quite long and you can sit in the queues to get out for more than an hour.

People bring BBQ 's and cook sausage and bacon for breakfast, and picnic blankets and camp chairs. There are lots of stalls with food and drink, and a lot of the stalls give away freebies. We got free water bottles - you can refill water bottles free on some of the stalls. Also there are a lot of free activities such as a board games tent, smoothie making where you choose your ingredients and pedal a bike to power the blender, a mobile phone charging place - again you pedal a bike to charge it! Loads of different things.

Dogs on leads are also allowed.

There are lots of other places where you can pay to park and then walk to the site but can't comment as we haven't used them.

Have a good time! We've always enjoyed it! Oh you may need cash for some of the stalls, there was a cash machine on site, like a temporary big metal box thing, but it did look a bit dodgy to us!