San Fermin. 9th July

On 7th July every year The San Fermines festival in Pamplona (Basque Country) begins. This is a 7 day event where the people dressed in the traditional outfit of all white with red neckerchiefs and sashes go mad and eat drink and be merry for the entire 168 hours. The highlight of the festival, or what it is most renound for is the daily event of the encierro. You will probably have heard about it or seen it on the TV, every day 6 bulls are let to run loose down the streets down to the plaza de toros (bull ring) and the people run with them…

Having heard that this was the biggest party ever known.. I had to go - obviously! Some friends of mine were going and I decided that they were worthy companions so I signed myself up. The coaches left Barcelona at 1200 midday and left Pamplona at 0900 the next morning - a full night of party party some running with the bulls and then heading home. I needed to make sure I had plenty of sleep in preparation (you know where this is headed) I ended up going to bed at 0730 on Friday (well Saturday morning) only to be up at 1030. I was dead, but there was no way I was gonna miss out and I made it to the bus.

7 hours later and a short stop in weasel country we arrived in Pamplona, a bottle of cava was handed out to everyone and we made our way into the festival.

It was completely mad. At 7pm all bars, squares, streets, clubs, pubs everywhere were absolutely full of drunken people having a crazy time… and not one fight!! It was great! Just my kind of place… we got kitted out with our red neckerchiefs and we were ready to begin the festivities with some dancing and clapping..

We decided we would have a sit down meal with plenty of wine.. before the real party started. Amazingly we managed to find a restaurant that would serve the 12 of us and we headed on over…

The restaurant was underneath a bar, even though it was only 10pm the place was jam packed and the floor was a lake of spilt drinks etc. I‘d had a couple of swigs of cava but I wouldn’t say I was drunk, but unfortunately I managed to take one step down the stairs, slip, and fall all the way to the bottom… The pain was intense and I knew any bull running was off, however I do now have an enormous purple and black bruise across my arse and one down my arm - war injuries. Yes! I used ice to numb the pain as well as plenty of alcohol and decided that medical issues could wait…there was mayhem to be had.

We finished the meal a couple of hours later and as we came out of the restaurant the streets had turned into carnage, people passed out in doorways, naked dancing… you get the idea. We decided to go to a bar but I managed to lose everyone apart from Jack on the way. Oh well not to worry, I tried to persuade Jack into dancing but he was having none of it and went and laid down on a patch of grass to rest… sleeping is cheating…there was no way I was going to travel 7 hours to do some resting, I was there to go mad. So off I went in pursuit of new friends, which I soon found in the form of some Basque guys who were wearing multi-coloured orange shorts and t-shirts. Now I had to admit when everyone wears exactly the same it makes it very difficult to find your mates amongst thousands and thousands. I was learning the hard way, but I would have no problem finding my new mates!

After having some banter with my new found friends I amazingly spotted the people that I had originally come with and we went to find somewhere to dance... the bars were so packed with people dancing, the people spilled out onto the street about 20 deep, getting to the bar was virtually impossible.. I say virtually... as I managed it!

We danced for a few hours before it was time to take our positions for the best part of the festival, the running of the bulls. I was already out due to my injuries but several of the group decided that they would participate. We decided that we would go down to the end of the route into the bull ring where all the runners and bulls end up and watch from the relative safety of the seats. To get a good view on the route you have to have found a good spot by 5am and then wait…

We got into the bull ring at about 0715 and took our positions quite high up in front of the main entrance where the runners would be coming in. There was a marching style band playing while we waited and the crowd got very lively, singing, chanting and doing the Mexican wave awaiting the first runners to come through, it was an amazing atmosphere and you felt really quite nervous for the people running - I was fairly glad that I had been injured as I would have been bricking it if I’d have run.
At 8am the run starts and the first "runners" came dawdling through. “What the hell is this?” I thought. “After all the anticipation they’re not even running”. Then we heard the first gun shot that indicated that the first bulls had been released… my, my, was there a change of pace, the dawdlers then started to leg it across the ring and throw themselves over the barriers, then hundreds of people came tearing through the gate running frantically towards the edges, closely followed by the bulls trampling everyone. It was all over within a matter of seconds and the bulls were recaptured. “Right, time to go” I thought, but no, with the bull ring now full of hundreds of people new bulls were re-released to go mad in the middle of the people. Oh my... I’ve never seen anything like it, people were trying to touch the bull and the bull was going crazy. One guy got tossed around by the bull for about 3 minutes. Loads got trampled and had their clothes ripped off them and one or two were gored. Watching it just made your stomach knot but you couldn't not watch. At one point a bull managed to jump over the barrier and into the crowd so I was quite pleased I was sitting far up.


At around 845 it was over and I made my way back to the coach for the 7 hour journey home... I almost died as the a.c. started blowing out hot air..

We finally arrived back in Barcelona at around 3.30 pm and I must’ve looked a right bedraggled state as i made my way home covered in filth with my little red neckerchief on.. nice!
I then slept for a loooong time.