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By Eve, December 12, 2011 5:18 pm

The number of hot air ballooning photos shared with us this season was higher than ever.  Not only did we see lots and lots but the standard and quality of those images was fantastic too.  So a huge thank you to everyone who shared their amazing images with us!

Receiving a massive 21.5% of overall votes to secure pole position in the Virgin Balloon Flights Annual Photo Competition 2011 was the breath-takingly atmospheric image taken over Longstanton in Cambridgeshire by Sam Tolley.

Sam Tolley's winning image: 1-10 Misty Morning

‘Misty Morning’ also won best in category securing a huge 29.4% of all the votes in Category 1 – Views from the Basket. Well done Sam; you’ve won a £125 Virgin Experience Days Gift Card for your category and overall win!

Sam shared ‘Misty Morning’ with us on the Virgin Balloon Flights Facebook page on 15th October 2011 and we thought it was pretty amazing back then – looks like we weren’t the only ones to think so.

The photo was taken on a morning flight departing from our Cambridge Golf Club (Longstanton) launch site as Sam was looking in an easterly direction whilst about a third of the way through his flight.

You can purchase a flight voucher to fly from Longstanton and appreciate these amazing views that Sam so spectacularly captured, from as little as £89! You can even receive 20% off a round of golf on us!

Runner Up Winners

Huge congratulations also go to our category winners who each win a £25 Virgin Experience Days Gift Card!

Category 1 – Views from the Basket Winner = Misty Morning by Sam Tolley

Category 2 – People and Balloons Winner = Inside the Balloon by John Wells

2-2 Inside the Balloon by John Wells

Category 3 – Images of Balloons Winner = In Essex by Danyelle Motley

3-3 In Essex by Danyelle Motley

Category 4 – The Mechanics of Ballooning Winner = Inflating the Balloon by Helen Lehan

4-3 Inflating the Balloon by Helen Lehan

Each flying season (March – November) we hold a Photo Competition so if you have any ballooning images (of Virgin balloons) that you would like to share, you can find out more here.

Well done to everyone who took part this season and we very much look forward to next year’s competition submissions.

To find out more about hot air ballooning with Virgin Balloon Flights including what to look forward to on the day of your flight visit our website virginballoonflights.co.uk.

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By Eve, April 28, 2011 3:04 pm

It’s not every day  that us Virgin folk get the chance to all work together under one roof. Spread out all over the UK we sometimes meet for meetings but never before have we met in one place to work towards one common objective for the good of the brand.

Enter, the Virgin Social Marathon! The very day after the Virgin London Marathon, on Monday 18th April 2011, Richard Branson kicked off a day of social interaction with a difference with a video tweet.

Virgin Media turned charitable private member’s club The House of St Barnabas in London’s chic Soho into ‘Our House’; the ultra fast 100Mb fibre optic broadband came in very handy with all of us tweeting for 7 hours non-stop!

Virgin’s digital teams tweeted and Facebooked their collective fans and followers to build brand awareness, grow fan bases, start the Twitter trend #ifvirgindid to encourage new ideas for the Virgin group and to give away the Ultimate Virgin Lifestyle Prize which included amongst other things a place in the 2012 Virgin London Marathon, flights to New York, balloon flights and free Virgin Active gym membership (lucky Tom Chalet won!).

Richard Branson’s famous ‘RBT’ mugs were dished out to people who tweeted photos of themselves with their boring old office mugs or who actually came to Our House for a cuppa with us.  The guys back at the office got stuck in too.

Nobby the pilot and his passengers achieved the accolade of ‘highest tea break’ with a photo of his passengers enjoying a tea break in the sky.

Even singer Josh Groban made an appearance and got tweeting too…

Virgin Balloon Flights gave away prizes to people who got involved online including David Cruise from California who only seemed to sleep for a few hours before waking and tweeting us again, local Social Media expert Jan Minihane who published a blog post on her site about the event and Michaela who tweeted that she would most like Alan Carr #inmyballoon.

We particularly liked the post by one budding entrepreneur who tweeted #ifvirgindid Olive Oil, which made us chuckle.

The day was a great success in scoring yet another Virgin first, raising our profile across the social media networks, increasing all of our fans and followers online but most of all we would like to say how amazing it was for all of us to just work together in one place, let’s hope it’s not the last time.

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By Eve, April 14, 2011 3:57 pm

Not unaccustomed to all-time firsts, several members of staff from across the Virgin group will be coming together on Monday 18^th April 2011 under one very groovy roof to take part in the first ever Virgin Social Marathon, the very day after the Virgin London Marathon.

With a view to raising awareness of all of our social channels, to give people a chance to win some amazing Virgin lifestyle prizes, to get a trend going on Twitter and to give everyone a chance to participate in shaping how we do things here at Virgin, we will be Tweeting and Facebooking for 8 hours from the very funky Virgin Media Our House in Soho, London.

We’re all very excited about the forthcoming social media day and look forward to working together to create and inspire some fresh ideas. We’re looking to fans and followers to suggest new entrepreneurial ideas so get your thinking caps on…

To find out what prizes are on offer and how you can be a part of this social first take a look at the social marathon blog on Virgin.com.

We look forward to seeing you online on Monday 18th, watch these spaces closely…

http://twitter.com/VirginBalloons

http://www.facebook.com/virginballoonflights

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By Kirsty, March 15, 2010 5:37 pm

So our wonderful new blog is up and running and following the success of our Facebook and Twitter pages we figured the best way to give you an insight into the life of a pilot is to get them to guide you through their daily duties with snippets of factual, interesting or just for fun information directly from themselves.

For many millions of people Twitter is the preferred way to socially interact with others and tell them in as many words as a text message what they’re doing, thinking or believe in. So you’ve guessed it … there’s a new tweeter in town and he is none other than our very own VBF pilot Mark Simmons better known to friends and colleagues as “Nobby!”

A commercial hot air balloon pilot since 1991 Mark has flown more than 80 different balloons in over 30 countries and is a double world record holder, to this day holding the record for being the youngest pilot to captain a balloon across the English Channel in 1991 at the age of just 21; impressive hey!

Receive more impressive info and tweets about preparations to fly from Ashton Court, Bristol; ballooning flights from Royal Victoria Park, Bath; Glastonbury; Cheltenham; Cirencester; Monmouth and Pandy near Cardiff in South Wales. No time like the present; follow Mark now!

First Tweet from @markthevbfpilot

“All eyes on the long range weather forecast for the start of the 2010 Flying Season next weekend! Fingers crossed for another good year.”

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By Kirsty, March 8, 2010 12:52 pm

So the phenomenon of social media has taken the world by storm, so much so that one in six higher education students enrolled in an online curriculum in 2009 and one out of eight couples who married in the US last year met through a  social media site!

Not only this but YouTube is one of the most frequently used websites in the world which highlights the increasing significance of video media and it’s importance for every business.

Virgin Balloon Flights are very excited that this summer will see the birth of their first 360º video stream on board a hot air balloon thanks to Richard Hart at Virtual Venue.  Keep your peepers peeled for the video on our blog!

Of course for now we have wonderfully captured still photographs on our website in the photo gallery for you to feast your eyes on.

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