101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [12]
Suddenly it’s 6:30 in the evening and you’re being prodded back into that big circle, where thousands of people are staring down at you from the stands. Several men come up to you on horseback, but before you can figure out why the horses are wearing blindfolds, the men take sharp lancets and twist them into your neck and back muscles. What are they doing, trying to kill you? You try to raise your head to gore them, but the lancets are making it hard to move. You’re still really sleepy, the blood is flowing freely down your legs, a different man just came in and stuck a harpoon point in your back, and now some asshole is standing in front of you with a red cape.
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This is officially the worst day ever.
Editor’s note: In addition to the Running of the Bulls/subsequent nightly bullfights that occur in Pamplona during the eight days of the Fiesta de San Fermín, watch out for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals protest that occurs the day before the festival begins. Formerly known as the Running of the Nudes, it involves hundreds of naked people parading through the streets smeared with fake blood—and is a total buzzkill for anyone looking forward to the sight of drugged, wounded bulls being brutally slaughtered in front of a live audience.
Chapter 15
The Gloucester Cheese Rolling Competition
Certain activities make me question how the human race survives. For example, the Cheese Rolling Competition, a yearly festival in which scores of people gather at Cooper’s Hill near Gloucester, England, for the chance to chase a piece of cheese off a cliff. Bones are broken. Joints are dislocated. Contestants are carried off the field on stretchers. This might be understandable for a sufficiently large prize, but in this particular contest, runners are risking life and limb for the glory of winning a seven-pound round of Double Gloucester cheese.
Fans of the Cheese Rolling Competition will accuse me of oversimplifying things, so let me take a step back. The proud tradition of cheese rolling dates back some two hundred years (diehard fans insist it comes from the Romans) and follows a strict order of proceedings. First, competitors line up on the top of Cooper’s Hill, a rugged, uneven pitch so steep that from the top of the slope, it appears concave. A master of ceremonies, wearing a white coat and a silly hat, escorts a guest “roller”—the person responsible for releasing the cheese—to the edge of the hill. On the count of three, the roller releases the cheese; on the fourth count, the runners throw themselves down the hill after it. Originally the point was to try to catch the cheese, but given that it can travel more than seventy miles per hour and has a one-second head start, the winner is usually just whoever crosses the finish line first.
It’s a painful race to watch. Most people lose their footing almost immediately and begin violently tumbling down the hill, bouncing onto shoulders, ankles, and heads, occasionally landing back on their feet before being thrown forward again. Lucky runners make it to the bottom intact, where volunteer rugby players known as catchers try to intercept them before they crash into the safety barrier of hay bales. Unlucky contestants are taken away by ambulance.
The 2009 competition alone saw fifty-nine injuries, of which only thirty-five were competitors. The rest were catchers and spectators, some trampled, some wounded when hit by the wayward cheese. One particularly unfortunate man held up the entire contest when he fell out of a tree.
But regardless of its inherent dangers, history dictates that the competition must continue. When World War II rationing forbade using a real round of cheese, contest organizers fashioned a cheese-shaped piece of wood with a token piece of Gloucester stowed inside. And even when the contest itself has been canceled, as it was during the foot-and-mouth scare of 2001 and again in 2003