It’s madness pure madness. The Tomatino, the world’s biggest tomato fight held in Bunol near Valencia in Spain is such a good laugh you really need to go there once in your life. Okay so getting 10 tons of tomatoes thrown at you for an hour may not be your ideal day out every day, but to experience it once, the complete anarchy is something you will never forget.

People come from all over the world to this tiny white Spanish town once a year to take part in the event. In fairness it is not just the tomato chucking that draws the crowds, it turns into a three-day boozy party when no one gives a shit and everyone is up having a good time.

It’s kind of hard to describe the feeling of being in a crowd of 5000 people waiting for a massive food fight to kick-off, the sense of anticipation is immense but in fairness people don’t usually wait for the tomatoes to turn up, as the Xtreme Gap Year group has a massive sangria party before the main event, and whilst you have several litres of sangria at your disposal to down (at eight in the morning of course) in reality this usually gets chucked everywhere.

There are all kinds of nationalities at the Tomatino, but there’s a surprising number of Australians and Japanese who attend. Why? I guess because it’s just such a ridiculous event it really appeals to them.

So what happens at the Tomatino?

Is usually an early start as some years there have been up to 40,000 people attend the event so to get the prime spot, right in the centre next to the greasy pole (more on that in a minute) you have to be up early. From 2013 the town hall sensibly started to regulate the numbers of people who could attend, so now there is a maximum capacity of 5000 at the actual event, which means early booking is essential to secure your Tomatino tickets as these will sell out well in advance.

So we will leave Valencia in the morning, we get bussed into the town, there’s not a lot else to do in Buñol in fairness, so it’s best to be based out of Valencia which is an amazing city.

We start off by having a massive sangria party, there is usually around 150 in the group and there are several litres available for everyone.

Around 930 we wake way into the main square, where people will be already attempting to climb up a greasy pole in order to secure the prized Jamon. Once this has been taken off the top pole (not easy considering it’s covered in fact in Grease and about 20 foot high) the carnage starts. It is utter madness, the Tomatino Is in full effect. It goes on for an hour with trucks driving through delivering fresh squishy tomatoes, as they get hurled at everyone.

You would expect the locals to get really irritated with thousands of foreigners turning up once a year to desecrate their town, but on the contrary. They absolutely love it and are the first to start chucking tomatoes around.

After an hour of the entire town just resembles soup, with people everywhere stinking and dripping in tomatoes it is really very funny.

As the buses do not park back to Valencia until two there are massive street parties all around. The atmosphere is incredible.

In the evening there is the Tomatino after party, 3 1/2 thousand people in an outdoor club dancing the night away it’s the perfect ending to the most ridiculous day you will ever experience.

You can book your Tomatino experience with Xtreme Gap Year make sure you don’t miss out.