Weekend with Willows. London to Oxford in a Gas Balloon by Hardy. Sir Alister,

Hard back book with colour pictorial dust jacket, 119 pages, 7 chapters illustrated with B/W plates and sketches , concluding with an 18 page poem by Neil Mackintosh. 

In this beautiful and fascinating book Sir Alister Hardy describes a true adventure in an old-fashioned gas balloon. Together with three companions he accompanied Ernest Willows, an enthusiastic balloonist and the early pioneer of British airships, into the clouds above London. it was October 1924.

Sir Alister's enthusiasm comes through on every page this was a real adventure, exciting, hazardous, quickening the pulse and yet filling him with the wonder of it all. They drifted westwards, lost their way, they climbed above the clouds to 10,000 feet, came down to enquire of their location only to frighten unsuspecting pedestrians as their disembodied voices boomed out of the darkness. The basket collided with a hilltop, bumped from tree-top to tree-top as they crossed a wood, and finally descended into what appeared to be mist but turned out to be the flooded Thames.