Crazy Tours & Contests

British comedian Tony Hawks once hitchhiked around Ireland with a fridge to win a hundred-pound bet he had been lured into by his friends at the local pub. Hawks’s epic, 1,650-kilometre journey earned him a place in the Guinness Book of Records. His absurd journey was also the topic of a bestselling book and an award-winning movie.

But not all crazy tours are so well documented. Not everyone is a celebrity with a weakness for weird wagers. I’m sure many stories of strange tours and incredible journeys are tucked away in photo albums and diaries around the world. I hope to track down some of these during the coming year. Maybe you have a brother or cousin who cycled from Montreal to Vancouver dressed in a bear suit, or an aunt or sister who knitted a 400-metre-long scarf while travelling from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Express. If so, please let me know.

I also love stories about unusual contests, customs and ceremonies, which often reflect the more bizarre and heroic aspects of the local culture. In Holland, we have the Eleven Cities Skating Tour, a 200-kilometre race that is held in Friesland whenever the ice is thick enough, which is not very often. The most recent Elfstedentochten were held in 1956, 1963, 1985, 1986 and 1997, but the whole of Holland still gets a touch of Eleven-Cities fever whenever temperatures drop below zero.

I also vividly recall the non-stop televised coverage of the Comrades Marathon in South Africa. This gruelling 90-kilometre race sees people running, walking and eventually crawling uphill from Durban to Pietermaritzburg one year, and downhill from Pietermaritzburg to Durban the next. Strangely, the experts claim the uphill run is less arduous, so choose wisely if you’re planning to risk your life and limbs in this spandex-clad madness.

And then there’s the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling Race in Gloucester, England. The concept is tragically simple. Contestants gather at the top of a hill and then chase a round Double Gloucester cheese as it rolls downhill at speeds of up to 112 km/h. Needless to say, no one has ever caught the cheese, mainly because it has a one-second head start. However, the first Speedy Gonzalez to cross the line alive wins the elusive fromage.

All of which leaves me wondering whether they have sausage-eating contests in Vienna, llama races in Lima, or perhaps a Festival of the Greased Pig in Shanghai. Feel free to share your country’s strangest contests and customs below.

Meanwhile, I’m planning a trip to Belgium where tennis champion Justine Henin is now serving meatballs at her restaurant Chez Justine. Would that be by lob or smash, I wonder?

(PS: If I don’t reply to your suggestion immediately, it’s because I’m in South Africa on a weird and wonderful book tour. I promise to post a full report soon.)

Richard de Nooy