La Tomat­ina — Pub­lic domain image from Wiki­pe­dia, by Aaron Corey

I some­times think that the Brit­ish are an unusual breed when it comes to sport, but when you look around Europe you start to real­ise that quite pos­sibly we don’t have the mono­poly we thought we did.

If you’re think­ing of a trip to Europe where you can get involved with some local sports, con­sider these.

Here’s a selec­tion of videos show­ing some of the things Europeans do for fun:

Cheese Rolling (England)

Take cheese, a round one.  Go to a steep hill.  Find a group of like minded mani­acs.  And then chase the cheese down the hill only to be greeted by a group of sim­il­arly crazy catch­ers wait­ing to ‘res­cue’ you at the bot­tom.  That’s England’s annual cheese rolling con­test.  Many people will be hurt and this is proof that the insur­ance com­pan­ies and inept Health & Safety con­sult­ants haven’t yet man­aged to stop people risk­ing their own lives for no sound reason whatsoever.

Wife Car­ry­ing (Finland)

The Scand­inavi­ans are about the most equit­able people you can ima­gine, yet it’s the men that have to do the car­ry­ing in this sport.  Wife Car­ry­ing is a sport that involves run­ning a 253.5m course, with your wife on your back.  I per­son­ally find the Esto­nian wife-lift the easi­est, but there are a num­ber of styles.

If you’ve been to Fin­land, you’ll know that they’re not the most svelte of peoples.  If you want to take part and have a typ­ic­ally skinny French wife you stand a good chance…

La Tomat­ina (Spain)

The Span­ish grow an awful lot of toma­toes.  This needs cel­eb­rat­ing.  What bet­ter way than to throw them at each other?  Every year, in Buñol, Valen­cia, the Span­ish enjoy noth­ing more than to throw toma­toes at La Tomat­ina And why not?  Beats throw­ing don­keys off churches.  My fam­ily hap­pens to live in the Valen­cia region, and I fully intend to attend though it’s worth not­ing — I’ve been to a few Span­ish fest­ivals and I know that alco­hol and chaos fea­ture strongly.

Bog Snor­kelling (Wales)

You might think of snor­kelling as some­thing to do at a Carib­bean beach.  Not the Welsh.  They like noth­ing bet­ter than to get into fancy dress, head to a bog and get swim­ming in the annual Bog Snor­kelling com­pet­i­tion.  There are prizes for speed, but many people enter the con­test to raise money for char­ity and, con­sequently, the efforts that get the most atten­tion are likely to raise the most money — hence the fancy dress.

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