Langdon Hills
Note: This map only gives a general idea of where this balloon landed.
LANGDON HILLS: Balloon descent
NOTES: Having found other accounts of balloon ascents by the French aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard, who made the first crossing of the English Channel in early 1785, I was interested to find this mention of another balloon flight in ESSEX, A Hidden Aviation History by Paul Bingley and Richard E. Flagg. This concerns an ascent in the early autumn of 1785.
"Lifting off from Chelsea, he drifted across London before landing 25 miles away on Langdon Hills near Basildon. According to one local man who witnessed the event, Blanchard 'pac'd it up in a post-chaise and went to London'." So, presumably he was flying alone?
What I now find interesting about this flight, presumably also in a 'hot air' balloon, is the distance covered. Unfortunately I can only guess at the distance made on the first Cross-Channel flight, but, with Cap Gris-Nez (the shortest distance from Dover) being 18 miles and Calais 23 miles, presumably they made land-fall in this region? And struggled to make it. (See my first listing for DOVER).
But here we have Blanchard making a flight of roughly 25 miles. Possibly then, perhaps, a world record - except that the idea of achieving world records had yet to be invented.
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