A pair of hobbyists have released a series of incredible photographs of Kent taken from the earth’s stratosphere.

Pals Robert Godfrey and Stephen McLoughlin released a weather balloon – filled with £250 of helium – more than 100,000 ft into the sky on Saturday morning.

The inflatable remained in the air for more than two-and-a-half hours, during which an £80 action camera attached to it took a number of snaps of the north Kent coast.

“It was snapping away, taking loads of pictures as it went up from St Albans,” Mr Godfrey told KentOnline.

“We got some amazing photos of the Thames Estuary, Medway Towns all the way to Thanet and across the Channel.

“We were really lucky with the weather because to get that view is very rare – there’s normally some sort of cloud obscuring it.

“Hopefully it gives people a perspective of the area they live in they might not have seen before.”

Mr Godfrey estimates the project – which was given the green light by the Civil Aviation Authority – cost more than £1,000.

The 38-year-old, who works as a mechanical engineer, says the equipment started to fall back down to earth when the balloon burst, triggering the release of a parachute.

“It was like a feather falling from the sky by the end,” he added.

“I did a lot of forecasts showing where it was going to land and we had two GPS trackers on there, so there was no trouble getting it back. It landed just outside Chatham in a tree.

"We did this as an experiment because we wanted to see if we could accurately project where it was going to land, and get some nice photos along the way.”

The balloon rose more 31,000 metres into the air, encountering temperatures as low as -55C.

Mr Godfrey says some of the photos retrieved from the camera “show a ring of ice around its lens” during the ascent.