Festivals in Europe

Part football, part thuggery, dripping in testosterone and tradition, Calcio Storico is not for the faint-hearted. Since the 1500's teams of 27 combatants - donned in period costume - have paraded through the picture-postcard streets of Florence before being let loose on each other in a sporting battle unlike anything else seen in Europe.

Whenever you catch a wacky, global sports round-up on the tele chances are they'll feature a bunch of Brits rolling uncontrollably down a ridiculously steep hill, neigh precipice, following a 7 pound chunk of cheese. Welcome to the outrageous world of Cheese Rolling, an age-old Pagan tradition celebrated annually in the Cotswalds and a damn good bit of fun to boot.

Glastonbury - or Glasto to it's friends - is a multi-headed behemoth of an event, a legendary hippie gathering and the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world.

Today it's headline musicians are plucked from a pouch of the biggest players of the day but it doesn't stop with the live tunes. For four days each and every June 170,000+ festival-goers are treated to over 700 performances of music, dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and a myriad of other arts on the 900 acre grounds - rain, hail or shine, though it's often the former.

So if you're taste in music is eclectic, your need for sleep non-existent and there's a touch of hippie stirring somewhere deep inside, then a trip to Glastonbury is a must at least once in this lifetime.

Each and every August in Buñol (a picturesque Spanish village just outside of Valencia) La Tomatina, the world's largest food fight is played out. The missiles, tomatoes, the targets, anyone crazed enough to turn up, the result, tomato-based carnage. Welcome to La Tomatina!

If being part of an immense sweaty throng moving to a single electronic beat is your thing then why not head for the Mecca of techno - Germany - for the one, for the only......Love Parade.

Join some of the globes top DJs each July as they take the party to the streets spinning to a crowd of a million plus hard core ravers. At night local clubs turn the event into a non-stop party.

So pack your toothbrush, your dance shoes and a bouncy disposition - forget the pajamas - and head to the Love Parade for the maddest, wildest weekend of your life.

Welcome to Oktoberfest - the world's largest and most celebrated beer festival. Never been? Close your eyes and picture part Disneyland, part Bud Brewery. Oktoberfest is to the beer aficionado what Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory is to the sweet-toothed.

Rides, beer, roast chicken, beer, pretzels, beer, lederhosen, did I mention beer? Six million litres of the stuff!

Set on grounds of over 100 acres in the magnificently picturesque Bavarian city of Munich, Oktoberfest has consistently attracted in the region of six million visitors year in, year out since 1980.

So if you enjoy your sustenance in a shade of amber delivered by a voluptuous Bavarian beauty to an oompha backbeat then Oktoberfest may just be the beer fest for you.

No sporting event evokes the national interest like the Tour de France does in it's homeland. Le Tour is a French institution, a massive event on any scale and a phenomenon as intriguing as any on the world sporting calendar. Over 23 days and 21 stages through the full gamut of terrain, weather and road conditions Le Tour is the ultimate endurance test for any cyclist and a great place to see the French and their captivating country at it's very best.