One of these famous festivals to see what all the fuss

As a young Australian living in London, I hear a lot about Europe’s amazing summer festivals. Almost every week during the summer my friends are heading off on tours like Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls or Oktoberfest for the Munich Beer Festival. It seems these festivals have become a right of passage for young backpackers living in London, with people treating you like a social outcast if you have not visited at least one of these “must do” events.

With this in mind, I decided to try one of these famous festivals to see what all the fuss was about. I did not fancy running down a narrow street being chased by six or seven 1 tonne bulls at Pamplona , and I am more of a wine girl so drinking litre stein’s of beer at Oktoberfest also did not really appeal. That left the last of the “big three events”, the world’s largest food fight called La Tomatina in Spain. I liked this idea a lot, an organised food fight in sunny Spain, and I even like tomatoes so it seemed the best option for me. After doing some research I decided to book a tour with Pillow Adventure Travel Company, who also included a trip to a local wine and water festival the night before La Tomatina.


Once the tour and my flight was booked, I decided to do a little research on the history of La Tomatina, and quickly realised there was no history. It seemed the event started around the 1940’s but nobody really knew why. Some stories claim locals threw tomatoes at an unpopular politician during a speech. Other accounts claim people threw tomatoes at a bad musician during a performance, and a truck carrying tomatoes was involved in an accident and its load was spilt over the road. The event really started to get popular in the 1980s, and now attracts up to 40,000 people a year to a tiny town called Bunol, which normally has a population of 9,000 people.


For further details about running with the bulls and Ladies Day Ascot
Please visit the website.