by Bob
We get out there early, set our hide up with camouflage netting and grass and stubble over it and shoot them. If we’re shooting a field where geese want to feed, we don’t need a lot of decoys to bring them into range, but if we want to pull them into a field they’re not directly feeding on, it helps to have a bigger pattern of decoys. I had a hundred and eight birds over three mornings one season, using about twenty decoys and a good caller. I breast them, bring them home and freeze them, for eating during the year ahead.
I’ve always been a good fit runner. I’ve outrun gamekeepers and dogs and Land Rovers – so, when I see a picture of people running in front of bulls in Spain, I think I’d like to have a go at that. I find out as much as I can about it and go over there for the first time in 2005. Pamplona’s the capital city of Navarre, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and they hold the Fiesta of San Fermín there every July. It’s an eight-day festival and I arrive a couple of days into it, with all sorts of music and dancing and fireworks and frivolity going on. But I’m only interested in the bulls. I find out where I’m supposed to go to take part – the town square – then I go get a white rig-out with red sashes like the runners wear and I kip down in the park that night in my sleeping bag. I’m up at dawn the next morning and have a light breakfast of strong coffee and a sweet roll because I don’t want a full belly weighing me down while I’m running.
I get to the square at 7:00 a.m. and there’s already crowds of people milling all over the place. Some of them look like they’ve been partying all night and are only there for the spectating and not to get anywhere near the bulls. Most of the runners are dressed in white, with the red bandanas round their necks and the red sashes round their waists, just like me. They’re called mozos, which I think means ‘boys’, and red and white are the colours of the butchers who began the running tradition years ago. As my grandfather was a butcher, it seems appropriate for me to be here – like I deserve my place. The bulls represent power and life and danger to me, and running with a wild dangerous animal will be primeval in its very essence. I’m jostling for position in the crowd of runners and I try to get to the front, where we’re being held back by the police until the official start time of 8:00 a.m. Then a rocket goes off to signal that the bulls are running.
The sea of mozos begins to jump up and down, trying to locate the rampaging animals, in order to time their run. Suddenly it’s like a tidal wave of bodies washing down the narrow streets and everyone around me begins to gallop. It’s a red-and-white cauldron – voices shouting, spectators screaming, the ground quaking. I’m not the tallest of blokes and I don’t see the bulls coming until they’re almost on top of me. I’m running as fast as my feet will move and I can feel the beasts’ breath on my back, smell their steaming bodies right behind me, their horns only inches away from my spine. Most of the mozos only run for a few seconds, scrambling to stay in front, then diving out of the way at the last moment. A bull becomes most dangerous when separated from the herd, so they run a few slower steers to keep them company, but I don’t want to be caught on a steer’s horns either, so I keep going.
As the seconds tick by, I’m finding it more and more difficult to make my running way through the throng. People are falling all around me and getting trampled on by those coming behind, and it’s more like an obstacle course than a bull run.
I turn into la Estafeta now, which is downhill, and a couple of the bulls behind me lose their balance and start sliding. I jump out of the way to avoid being upended and I pass them again before they manage to get back on their feet. I can see the bullring up ahead, which is the final destination and, although I’ve only been running for a few minutes, it’s at full pelt and my breath’s coming in gasps and my heart’s pounding. The entrance to the bullring’s narrow, like a funnel, and all the runners are trying to get through at once and jamming it up. The bulls are closing fast behind me and I’ve got nowhere to go. Then I fall to the ground, having been accidentally tripped by some careless idiot. I try to get up, but it’s impossible. Panic-stricken people are crushing me, trying to get through the bottleneck, trampling me underfoot. Then the bulls arrive and pound over me. I’m hit by hooves in the head and stomach and arms and legs, and the screaming and snorting is deafening. Until it all goes quiet after the pandemonium passes and I’m lying motionless on the ground. Some people come to see if I’m alive or dead and I struggle back to my feet. A medic checks me out and there are no broken bones, although I have extensive bruising to my body and find it difficult to walk for the next four days.
Since then, every July, I go back to Pamplona for the bull running. I either go for a day or two or sometimes for the full week – and every year I do the run. But I’m more crafty now and don’t get hemmed in and tripped up, like I did that first time. I go on my own, flying over to Barcelona and bussing the rest of the way and sleeping in the park, but they come from all over the world to have a party and sometimes I link up with people I’ve met from previous years.
The running of the bulls is called the encierro and it’s something that couldn’t be done anywhere else. It originated with the need to get animals to the bullring from outside the city. These days the encierro starts at a corral in Calle Santo Domingo when the clock on the church of San Cernin strikes eight in the morning. The Spanish sing a prayer to Saint Fermín for his blessing, then two rockets are launched, one to signal the release and another to signal the animals are all out and running. Then about a dozen bulls and steers charge behind the runners for a distance of just over half a mile. Most of the runners wear their red and white and carry rolled-up newspapers, and I fit right in with the rest of them – just like I did the first time.
A double row of barricades runs along the length of the route to allow runners to escape if they’re in danger – the gaps in the barricades are wide enough for a human to get through, but not a bull. There’s little chance of being gored by the bulls – being trampled by the hundreds of idiots that take part is the biggest danger. Most of them don’t have any bottle and they panic when the bulls get close and they can cause chaos – like what happened to me in my first run. But I call it running with the bulls now, rather than running in front of the bulls, because that’s what happens with most of them. Personally, I try to stay ahead of the beasts for the full three or four minutes and I always have done, except when dickheads get in the way. Blokes called pastores run behind with long sticks, to stop the idiots from antagonising the bulls from behind and making them turn round and run back the way they came. But this is sometimes impossible because of the amount of people that get overtaken, then they start grabbing the bulls by the tails and doing stupid things, just to prove how macho they are. Trained bullfighters are positioned in the bullring, to help the runners get out and to guide the bulls through and into another corral. When that’s done, everything settles down and the whole thing’s over.
It’s not as dangerous as the television programmes make it out to be. At the same time, not everyone can do it. It takes cool nerves, quick reflexes and physical fitness. If you’re not up to it, stay away. Which the vast majority of the runners should do and leave it to people like myself, who’re fit enough to stay in front of the bulls and not be endangering everyone around them. If you want to have a go, you have to be over eighteen and you got to get to the City Hall Square before 7:30 a.m., that’s when entry to the run closes. Harassing or maltreating the bulls ain’t allowed, but the morons still do it – neither is drunkenness or the taking of any kind of drugs. But who can tell if an entrant’s high or not? They all seem to be on something to me! It’s just an adventure that I’ve taken part in for a few years now and maybe I’ll continue to do it for a few more – or maybe I won’t.
Another place I’ve been going to regularly for a few years is Ireland. During the coursing and racing days, I used to go over there buying and selling greyhounds. I’d bring dogs back, get them going good, then sell them or sell a share in them – but I’ve not been doing that for a while now
. Instead, I go over there and rent a cottage on the wild west coast, just to get away from it all and savour the solitude. I don’t go to hunt or fish, but to take a break and explore remote areas, from Bloody Foreland in the north to Roaringwater Bay in the south. And once I saw a ghost. It’s when I was staying in a lonely part of County Mayo called Blacksod Bay and I’m up early this morning, watching a strengthening sun out over the raw Atlantic, walking alone along the ancient clifftops, listening to the calls of the curlews and the searing cries of seagulls as they glide over the glistening water. Standing on the edge of a continent, surrounded by acres of milkwort and lyme grass and creeping willow – when, suddenly, a thick mist rolls in and blots out the sun and the luminous sea. For some reason, although I ain’t never been a superstitious man, a shiver runs up along my spine and a cold chill flows through my bloodstream.
I move inland, hoping to find my bearings and not fall over the edge of the cliff, but the mist thickens even more as I trek in along the lanes. There’s no people nor houses anywhere near this place, so no way to get directions, and I’m completely lost now. I’m looking for high ground to get up above the fog and see where I’m situated, when I come to a gradient that turns into a hill. I follow it until I run out of road and find myself in an overgrown churchyard, with subsiding stones and a small fire of elderwood and leaves burning and an eerie silence all around. I’ve seen no animals on the way here and now not even the sound of a birdcall can be heard. The air’s dead, no breeze blows and it seems like time’s standing still. The church looms out of the gloom like a menacing monster and I’m wondering if there’s a priest inside who could point me in the right direction back to my little cottage. I pass by old Celtic crosses with weather-worn inscriptions, to a heavy wooden door that creaks when I push it open and step cautiously inside.
It’s dark in the old church, with just a haunting of light from the high stained-glass window and a single candle flickering in front of a menacing crucifix on a dark altar down the end of the aisle.
‘Hello!’
No answer.
‘Anyone here?’
Nothing. I’m moving down the church towards the candle, when I hear the sound of rustling movement behind me. I turn to see something fading into the air. An image. An emanation in the shape of a woman with flowing hair and a long, shift-like dress – just a glimpse, before it evaporates. And I think it’s a trick of the shadows in this relic of a church. Then the door I came in through slams shut and I put it down to the wind, even though there’s no wind to speak of. I retreat and try the old iron handle, but it won’t open, no matter how hard I pull. It’s jammed tight. Time to calm down and gather my giddy thoughts. There must be another way out – and somebody must’ve lit the candle and the fire outside. The window’s too high to climb through, but maybe there’s another door behind the altar.
I move towards the ghostly candle again, sideways, keeping a lookout behind me in case I’m crept up on. I’m level with the flame now and I see a face reflected in it. Not my own face – a woman’s, with lips drawn back across her teeth in a threatening smile. Her eyes are blood red and I jump back away from them. Then a sudden breeze blows the candle out and the apparition disappears and I’m alone. I notice a little door behind the altar, leading to an old sacristy. I move quickly along a low corridor and out onto the coast road. The mist’s lifted and the sun’s shining again.
Later I learn from the locals that the church was abandoned long ago, when the priest moved to the new ministry in the village of Dooagh. And there’s a story about a banshee – banshees are women who were hired to howl at funerals – haunting the place. Even now I can’t say for sure if I really saw her, or if it was just a figment of the flickering candle and my frightened fancifulness. But what I’d like to know is this – who lit the candle in the first place? And the fire outside? And they say Judas hanged himself from an elder tree and the burning of that wood unleashes the devil.
I visit Ireland every now and then and maybe I’ll go back some day to the old church near Blacksod Bay, to see if the banshee’s still there.
Besides Ireland, what I like doing most of all is going off alone to places like Romania and Estonia and Poland and Belarus and other Eastern European countries, between the months of April and November. I go for a few weeks at a time and trek into the big forests and national parks and onto the mountains to find wild animals – bears and wolves and bison and elk. These ain’t hunting trips, and I don’t have a gun or any other weapon. I just go to see the animals, to be out there with them and to share their space. It’s not all about killing, it’s about observing animals.
When the communists were around in Eastern Europe, they stopped the shooting of wolves and bears, so there’s a good population of them there today, and I’ve seen them all, up close – wolves and wildcats and bears and European bison. I’ve no wish to shoot them – what for? I couldn’t take them home to eat them! It’s just a chance to be part of their environment, living for a short time the way they do – being close to nature and the essence of what it is to be a real human being, not a whining artificial imposter. I never take a guide with me because I have tracking knowledge. I know how to find animals. I have that instinct: where they prefer to lay up to get out of the cold; where they water; where they go to find what they need to survive. I’m usually days from civilisation, in hundreds of square miles of forest. Sometimes I camp out and other times I use cabanas, which are mountain huts where I can get a bunk and a bite to eat.
Once, back in 2008, I’m out in the Byelavyezhskaya Forest, which spills over from eastern Poland into western Belarus. It’s one of the largest areas of primeval mixed woodland in Europe, with pine and beech and oak and alder and spruce growing over an area of nearly five hundred square miles. I don’t stick to the National Park with its guided field trips – too many idiots with mobile phones taking pictures and shouting to each other and crashing about like a bunch of demented bears, so no animal will come near them. I get off the beaten track and onto more rugged terrain, away from the trails altogether. On this trip, I want to get up close to the wisent [bison] and watch them graze in the clearings and on the hay meadows at the fringes of the forest. They stay in the trees in summer and it’s easier to come across them at this time of year, in early winter.
It’s an embryonic experience, wandering through the November trees with no one near me for miles, and knowing I’m surrounded by wild animals like elk and lynx and wolf, even if I can’t always see them. I can smell snow in the air, coming from the northern regions of this little spinning-top world, where my father once hunted with an Eskimo. I move along the border between Poland and Belarus, through country that’s as close as any to how it was when the woods were inhabited by Vistulans and Kryvians and Steppe Nomads and a man could understand who he was – before it all got clouded and confused. I want to see the bison before I go home and I hope the experience will keep me going until I can come back again.
I like being out here alone in the wild and I’m drawn south, kept company by buzzards and black woodpeckers and long-eared owls. The leaves of the deciduous trees are falling all around me and the forest floor’s a carpet of russet colours. I set up my tent close to a clearing, as night’s beginning to fall and I want to get a small careful fire going so I can cook my beans and sausage and make a mug of strong tea. The clearing’s large; there are signs of bison around and I hope I’ll be able to see them tomorrow. I relax in the gloaming, lying quietly in the seclusion of the forest and the comfort of my own company.
Next morning I’m up early and in cover at the edge of the tree line. Then I see them, emerging cautiously into the open: a small herd – a couple of young bulls and about half-a-dozen cows and some calves, maybe a year or two old. The mature adult bulls tend to stay solitary for most of the year and only rejoin the herd during the mating season in August and September. I’m watching them for a while and it’s a majestic sight, when I notice that something else is watching them too – a
grey wolf. It’s an adult male of about a hundred pounds in weight and maybe forty inches tall at the shoulder. I’m downwind, so he can’t scent me. Then I see some movement and another wolf becomes visible, and another, and another. It’s a pack – on the hunt. The bison sense the danger somehow and stampede off across the clearing. The wolves don’t follow, just watch them go, and I think they’ll probably circle round through the trees and try to catch the wisent by surprise and maybe bring down a calf.
Later in the day I pack up my gear and trek further south, hoping to come across an elk or a bear or a wildcat. Tomorrow’s my last day and then I have to head home to England. The weather turns colder and snow starts to fall as I pitch my tent and make camp that night. I think about the wolves as I sit by the fire. They’re rarely seen and I’ve been very lucky to encounter them like that today. I wasn’t afraid because, as far as I know, there ain’t a single case of a human being killed by a healthy wolf. But they’ve always been labelled as vicious and bloodthirsty and they’ve been hunted and trapped and poisoned to the point of extinction for hundreds of years, based on religious superstition and irrational fear. They’re the ancestors of all dogs, no matter what shape or size, even the greyhound and the fox. They’re intelligent, tactical hunters that work together to bring down prey, even though they’re all different, with their own personality. The strength of the pack’s in each individual wolf, and the strength of each individual wolf is in the pack. The wolf’s emotions and behaviour patterns are similar to ours – affection and loyalty and jealousy and anger – and they communicate through sound and smell and body gestures. Just like us. But howling’s the thing that mystifies and frightens most people, especially when more than one wolf’s doing the howling – like now.