SAN FERMIN 2014
7th and 8th July. Another early start for an adrenaline fueled canter down the street being chased and running with the bulls.
It only feels like yesterday when it was 2013 and we did this before. My 4th festival of San Fermin didn't disappoint.
Another trip to Pamplona the wonderful Spanish city and another two runs where you literally dice with death.
After six days of sangria abuse my voice is shot to pieces, my feet ruined and my mind broken.
Was it worth it?
Hell yeah!
San Fermin; if you utter those two words a shiver travels
down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
Those two words for me summon up a melting pot of emotions.
Fun, excitement, thrills, scares, adrenaline fuelled madness and pure exhilaration.
For this year was my fourth year running with the Bulls in
the beautiful Spanish city of Pamplona.
Every years since 2011 I have run and said that I may not
come back the following year. Then when July arrives I can’t help myself and I
am off to Spain to run with those giant snorting and bulking beats. Horns
inches from my face and certain injury.
This year was slightly different. I travelled with one
person rather than a group of us. This year I took my 19 year old cousin Ollie
who to be blunt is not very well travelled and worldy. This trip would either
break him or make a man of him.
We arrived after a long horrible and sweaty bus journey and
I was greeted with the familiar sight. The city of Pamplona looked pristine in
the sun, the buildings clean and the streets vendors selling red and white
garments for you to wear. I old Ollie to take a photo and then compare his
pistine city to when the opening ceremony hit town.
The opening ceremony o the 6th July literally explodes
into life.
Imagine someone has swung a bat at a large piƱata suspended
over the city and suddenly as the bat strikes sangria explodes and soaks all
and sundry.
The city becomes red and pink for a week after this.
So here we were as usual we had picked up a large group of
Australians from the campsite and it wasn’t even nine in the morning and we
were in the town square covered from head to toe in sangria.
We were all in white which was now pink with red sashes
round our waits and a red neckerchief around our wrists ready to wave it a the strike
of midday.
One of the Aussies Luke turned to me and smiled and said ‘I cannot
believe the carnage and it’s not even lunch time yet’.
People were bundling, plastic bottles were flying and soon
filling up balconies making it impossible for the occupiers o open their doors.
Shirts were ripped off and sangria flew through te air
getting into your eyes and making them sting.
People danced, sang and music blared. Flags fluttered in the
breeze and all this was in anticipation of the start of the San Fermin
festival.
Legend has it that San Fermin was dragged through a town in France by a rope attached to his
neck b bulls. This is why when the clock strikes 12 and the cannon sounds the
neckerchiefs can be worn to symbolise his blood.
Every face around you smiles and shouts and has a wild look
in their eyes.
It is almost as if anything goes and people are jumping into
the crowd and literally going berserk.
A smile so wide you could park a car in it is permanently
embossed on my face and this is why I come back. For this one day where almost anything
can happen and you wander around a city drinking, singing, getting randomly
interviewed on TV and talking to everyone.
The cannon sounds and the cheer from the crowd is immense,
the jostling and dancing erupts and for the next hour and a bi you are in a sea
of red and white and pink sangria soaked sweaty bodies moving as one unit. You
are lost the a moment that lasts forever and you are almost overwhelmed by what
in my opinion is the greatest festival on this wonderful Earth.