A huge thank you to everyone who entered the Mayor’s Virtual Balloon Race recently. Here are your official winners!

1st – Pete & Rach (Rachel Kessler)

2nd – Fit To Burst (Lucy Musk)

3rd – Eppie Dog (Lynne James)

All money raised will be going to One YMCA, the Mayor’s chosen charity for this year! Councillor Gareth Aicken himself would like to express his heartfelt and endless gratitude to everybody for donating via purchasing a balloon for the race. Your money will go on to help OneYMCA continue putting on programmes and initiatives to help the local community!

The race was incredibly close in the end, with the top three balloons coming in at 26,348, 26,341 and 26,340 virtual kilometres!

The Route

To put the distances into perspective, this would be the equivalent of the balloons flying West from their start point at Birchwood Leisure Centre, over the Atlantic Ocean and passing the East coast of the USA, where they float over Cuba and Jamaica, and then onwards over the Caribbean Sea.

The balloons then cross over Costa Rica and into the South Pacific Ocean, where they head past the Galapagos Islands and cross the massive body of water towards New Zealand and Australia.

Coming in from the South of Western Australia, the balloons begin descending over Kennedy Range National Park and then finally come into land around Minilya, an area near the coast with a population of just 19 people!

…in theory anyway!

A huge congratulations to all of our winners!

The Winners