SEVILLE'S FERÍA DE ABRIL

Thrown into the throng of one of Europe's most vibrant festivals on an accidental weekend in the Andalusian Capital.

Seville, mid-April. After an aborted trip in March for the Easter week celebrations due to a particularly bad bout of flu I'd opted for the consolation prize of the 'Fería de abril', the city's wild and exuberant week-long party and, in its colour, vibrancy, song and dance, the complete antithesis to the somber and austere Semana Santa processions.

I'd flown in from Cantabria on a morning flight and the temperature was climbing steadily, touching 30C by the time I was wandering over the town in search of my hostel. The heat had taken me by surprise. I was wrapped up in at least two too many layers and sweat was now creating its own river system inside my clothes. I'd known it was going to be warmer, of course, but I hadn't been expecting this.

The location for the Fería was a vast area the size of a small town which for the other 51 weeks of the year must look a bit unloved and neglected. This week, however, was different and over the next couple of hours I was to witness an unrivalled spectacle of Andalusian opulence. It was 7pm by the time I'd crossed the lazy Guadalquivir river and made the half hour walk across the old gypsy neighbourhood of Triana to the outskirts of the city. The heat was soporific and I was down to a t-shirt and wishing I'd packed some shorts.  On turning a final corner a huge gateway emblazoned with thousands of coloured light-bulbs towered above me, it was truly enormous. I stopped to load my cameras with film and take a breath, my heart racing. Then I dived in to forget myself in the deep end of the infinity pool of Spanish cultural delights.

They say you can only really find out who you are by taking yourself out of your natural environment, your habitual habitat, and putting yourself amongst the exotic. It is impossible to measure yourself against familiarity, your surroundings and you are one and the same; a symbiosis brought about by years of routine. Take a sheep from his flock and stick him with a herd of cows and suddenly he realises he's a sheep, he's different. This is something I've often thought about on my various travels around the world but never had this been more true than now.

As well as a huge fairground with rides and attractions, the Fería is made up of more than a thousand casetas, tent-like structures of about 30m2 serving as private gathering spaces for local families and businesses to eat, drink and dance. As I walked through the rows and rows of these private parties, I felt a growing shame at my Anglo Saxon reservedness and an acute awareness of my inadequacies and abilities to let go and have fun. I was an outsider catching fleeting glimpses from the corner of my eye of a thousand moments I could never experience, however much I desired it. It was wholeheartedly uplifting as well as a deft blow to my yearning to be part of something.

I pressed on, deeper into the melee. Men, women and children rode about on horseback, both beast and rider dressed in their traditional finery. Manzanilla, or sherry, was sipped from delicate, long-stemmed glasses both on and off the horses by men in wide-brimmed Cordoban hats. Tight-fitting feminine dresses of all designs and colours were paraded around by dark-haired and impossibly beautiful women with flowers in their hair and horse-drawn carts carrying whole families trotted past on their way to meet friends. A hundred different songs blared and blended into an orgasmic cacophony of sound. A timeless old, low light lit the scene adding an air of otherworldliness to the spectacle and I wandered blissfully around not wanting the moment to end.

As I floated back to my hostel to freshen up before sampling some of Seville’s nocturnal delights, I reflected on the serendipitous turn of events that had brought me here; this was what travelling to new places was all about - the unplanned and unexpected, catching us off-guard. If consolation prizes were as good as this, who would want to be a winner?