An annual hot air balloon festival due to launch in Durham over the Bank Holiday weekend has been grounded.
The organisers of Balloons InDurham, who had already moved the festival from its traditional spring slot to summer, now face problems due both to weather and location.
And on Monday, Durham BID - the business improvement district company which hosts the event - was forced to announce its cancellation.
The main reason, it said, was "the continually poor weather forecast" but finding, and preparing, a central site has not been easy.
The announcement said: "Organisers had planned to move the whole event exclusively into the city centre for a date in August but, unfortunately, timings of site availability and poor weather forecasts for flying means that Balloons InDurham will now be postponed until 2020."
The festival has previously taken place during the Spring Bank Holiday at East Durham College's Houghall Campus, with fringe events hosted in the city centre.
But the planned changes of both time and location have proved doubly difficult.
Adam Deathe, Durham BID business engagement manager said: "We appreciate a lot of people will be disappointed by the news that Balloons InDurham will be returning to the city in 2020, rather than August of 2019 as initially hoped.
"As I’m sure you can appreciate, events of this scale take an awful lot of behind-the-scenes planning and, due to logistical constraints beyond our control, it has not been possible to bring together all elements that would allow a city centre site to host the hot air balloon launches this year, at a time that would work well for all stakeholders involved and the wider city’s event calendar."
He added: "Coupled with this, the weather forecast for August is not on our side.
"The continued turbulent weather, as a result of the jet stream remaining stubbornly south of the UK, shows no sign of settling and so we have decided to cease efforts for this year.”
The hope now is that next year will bring better luck in matching up both appropriate location and flying conditions.
"We want to make it very clear that we have every intention of Balloons InDurham returning to the city in 2020," said Mr Deathe.
"With the added time this slight delay has afforded us, we’re working even harder behind the scenes to make the event’s comeback bigger and better than ever before."
To find out what else there is to look forward to in Durham , visit the Durham BID site here .
