Hot Air Balloon Rides
in Petworth

Enjoy Stunning Views Ballooning Over Petworth

Petworth is a small market town with a big reputation, best known for antiques shops, winding lanes, and the grand estate of Petworth House. The house itself has long ties to art and landscape — J.M.W. Turner painted here, and Capability Brown reshaped the park into sweeping lawns and lakes that still catch the eye today. From the air the scale of it becomes clear: a great house set in rolling grounds, with the town clustered tight around its edge.

Balloon flights launch from a field at Colhook Common, just outside Petworth. The lift is gentle, and within moments the countryside opens up in every direction. Wooded ridges, scattered villages, and strips of farmland fill the view. To the south and west, the line of the South Downs appears, its chalk slopes running for miles like a natural wall. On some days the breeze carries you across the park itself, where the long water and open glades stand out like a painting seen from above.

If the wind turns north, the Weald unfolds — a patchwork of woodland, hedgerows, and meadows broken by old lanes. To the east, the spire of nearby churches sometimes catches the light, and on clear days you can trace the pattern of villages all the way towards Sussex’s larger towns.

Flights here are never the same. You might drift low enough to see deer moving through the park, or rise high where Petworth House is a single shape on the land and the Downs stretch across the horizon. However it happens, launching from Petworth gives you a quiet, steady way of seeing this corner of West Sussex — a view of both a grand estate and the gentle landscapes around it.