Should you be reckless, feckless, fearless or a fool, yet capable of running like the wind after a night of wild abandon, there is only one place worth heading for this week, Pamplona in northern Spain, where the nine-day festival of San Fermin begins on Thursday.

Described by Ernest Hemingway (who started the whole cult with his writings) as a "wonderful nightmare", San Fermin is of course best known for the encierro, the running of the bulls. Starting each morning at eight and finishing three minutes later, this consists of six snorting behemoths stampeding some 800 metres through the narrow streets of Pamplona from the church of Santo Domingo to the bullring, accompanied by hundreds of the world's most prized lunatics. During the day you can easily spot the latter, parading in their ripped T-shirts.

As for the rest of us, after the cool refinement of the Guggenheim in Bilbao (two hours' drive away) the festival of San Fermin is still well worth a one- or two-night stopover. Even though Pamplona itself is no beauty, the nightly street parties and corridas , or bull fights, are played out in an atmosphere that, for me, forms a link between the ritual barbarity and spectacle of the Colosseum and the now defunct football terrace culture of Europe, pre-hooliganism; with boccadillas instead of burgers and barely a whiff of danger (to humans, at any rate). Call it licensed licentiousness or designer disorder if you must, but don't expect to be called for breakfast.

I arrived half-way through last year's fiesta, and via the tourist office found a £65 room (including parking, vital in the central area) in a gloomy but immaculate pension off the Plaza de la Cruz. The two old sisters who ran the place immediately tried to overcharge me. When I corrected their sums the dominant one pronounced me to be " Muy listo !" Very smart. What she was really saying, for her sister's benefit was, "Just our luck, a Jew who can add up."

Hoping to even the score, she said: "You'll never get a ticket to the bullfight now. Never. The bullfights in Pamplona, it's like the World Cup. Sold out months ago."

But she'd forgotten. I was muy listo . Outside the bullring (less ornate than the ones in Madrid or Seville but large enough for 20,000), I played the usual watching and waiting game, seeing who was buying, who was selling. But I didn't want just any ticket. Mine had to be for the andanada de sol ; that is, the cheap seats on the sol or sunny side of the bullring's upper tier, where the penas , or social clubs, gather with their booze and brass bands.

Many of their members wear variations of the official uniform of San Fermin; white shirts and trousers set off rather rakishly by a scarlet panuelo , or neckerchief, and a red faja , or sash, tied round the waist; not dissimilar to the garb of the Young Communist League and, in common with so many of Pamplona's "traditions", a relatively recent adoption. More recent still is the San Fermin "underpants race", which starts at 3am in the city centre, with breaks for champagne and prizes for the dirtiest knickers. You get the picture.

After quizzing various types who looked as if they knew their tauromachian onions (mostly Australians plus a few sober chaps from Sussex, wearing BHS casuals and unbranded trainers), I finally paid 3,000 pesetas to a tout, twice the official price but still cheaper than watching Premiership football.

And off I went, an English lamb to the Sanfermines slaughter; an innocent with 19 years' experience of visiting and writing about stadiums; a tentative adventurer who had been to bullfights and bunfights all over the world. Had felt the hot breath of the mob, in Manchester, in Mexico, in Milan.

But the next three hours at the Plaza de Toros in Pamplona? No, this was different.

Nowadays, being drunk and disorderly would bar one's admittance to most stadiums. In most parts of the world, taking any glass bottle into a sports venue is forbidden (except at English cricket, where the gatemen search you only to check on the vintage). In Pamplona, my single bottle of plonk - my one, oh-so-daring, aren't I being naughty with my little 70cl accompaniment - was enough to mark me out as a total mummy's boy.

The pena pals in Section 11 could hardly have been more welcoming, nevertheless. " Inglaterra ?" they asked, making room amid the travelling off-licence strewn across the concrete benches. I don't mean bottles here, by the way; I'm talking buckets. Big buckets. Actually, vats. All full to the brim with sangria and another popular local lubricant, calimocho - a mix of rough Rioja and Coke, designed to keep you happy and peppy and a little bit burpy all at the same time.

By the time the first bull had met his maker - an act met with silence from the aficionados below us, owing, quite literally, to its clumsy execution by the matador - my paltry bottle was empty, my back drenched from showers of sangria, and my hat covered in flour. But it could have been worse. In other sections the lads were throwing yellow dye and soggy fruit.

Strangers' arms and even stranger armpits soon locked me in their clawing, intimate embrace. Shoulders entwined, swaying left, swaying right. Rowing forward, rowing back. Standing up, crouching down. Each time to a chant. " Las Chicas, Las Chicas, yeh, yeh, yeh ." This matador has cojones . That one's mother is a puta . Long Live San Fermin. Fuck the Madrileños . Hijos de Putas , the lot of them. To the left, a brass band. To the right a brass band. "Yeh, yeh, yeh."

Stereophonic discordance and the microwave sun were soon making me pig sick and roasted in the middle, until at last my compañeros turned their attention to some girls newly arrived in our section.

" Chicitas !" went up the cry. And in T-shirts!

In an instant, cups, bottles and beakers were refilled and then emptied with ferocious precision until hardly a dry bosom remained in the aisle.

But then came another diversion. From the vomitory down to our right, up popped up the head of a diminutive, elderly Japanese man, wielding an expensive camera, a tripod and an inquisitive expression. I'm not sure what the Spanish is for "sitting duck". But it hardly mattered since the lads immediately tried to engage him in Japanese.

"Ka-mi-ka-ze, ka-mi-ka-ze!" they chanted, before unleashing their own Pearl Harbor in bucket loads. I saw the man glance up in our direction, open mouthed, at the exact moment before a wave of sangria cruelly lashed his torso. A knife-wielding assassin leaping out of a potted palm could hardly have provoked in him a more startled expression.

" Olé !" cried the aficionados, applauding the matador now in the ring. (I really should have been paying more attention, though I knew the score. It read, Humans 3, Bulls 0.)

Back in our bibulous bedlam, meanwhile, the Japanese man saw his chance and with surprising agility managed to duck and weave like an infantryman dodging fire, along the aisle into the safety of the next vomitory, down to our left. A lull ensued.

But only momentarily, for a few seconds later, from out of the vomitory on our right, up popped another head. That of a diminutive, ageing Japanese woman. The wife. This time I had to look away as the bombardment was renewed. Poor woman. Poor man. Such tales of Europe they would take home with them. Such barbarity they had encountered. Such disrespect for the elderly. Such dry-cleaning bills.

And then it was time for the merienda (the half-time break). We fell back onto our concrete benches.

Next to me, a leary-eyed man of 50 or so with a cold-box the size of a small car, pulled out an unmarked bottle and winked in delight. A sideways flick of his wrist and my plastic cup ranneth over.

I stared unsteadily down into its oily depths as my new amigo began to toast " La Reina Ay-lee-za-bet !" Another mouthful of alcohol and my head would have spun away.

" La Reina ! Da Queen !" my neighbour insisted. But what was in the drink? Pacharán, I was told, the favourite liqueur of the Navarrese. Its sickly aroma was anise, mixed with bilberries. Sweet ruin. Sweet Jesus.

" Ingles !" cried the man once again, raising his tumbler. " La Reina Ay-lee-za-bet! "

Somehow my cup rose. My stomach tightened in dread anticipation. I put the cup to my lips: " La Reina !"

And then, like an angel of mercy, into the aisle reappeared the couple from Japan.

If only I could have thanked them more formally for their timely return. Instead, I did what any gentleman would have done in the circumstances. I offered them my drink. Admittedly not in a container. But they received it all the same. Every last drop.

I was getting the hang of this fiesta lark.

• Adapted from Sightlines - A Stadium Odyssey by Simon Inglis, published by Yellow Jersey Press at £18.To order a copy of Sightlines for £15 plus 99p UK p&p, freephone 0800 3166 102 or send your order with a UK cheque payable to The Guardian Culture Shop, to 250 Western Avenue, London, W3 6EE.