BABY JUMPING

EXCERPT FROM EUROTRIPPING ©JR DAESCHNER

For a man about to jump babies, Rafael Benito is remarkably relaxed. Whereas other devils talk about their legs quivering into jelly, he claims he's never been nervous about his make-or-break role in the annual Baby-Jumping Festival.

Every June, the village of Castrillo de Murcia in northern Spain puts its very future at risk in one of the world's most bizarre blessing ceremonies. Dozens of infants born during the previous year are laid out on full-length mattresses in the streets while the priest and his entourage shuffle through the pueblo.

Then, amid clouds of prayer and incense, a couple of 'devils' in Reeboks take running leaps through the baby obstacle course, knowing full well that just a few centimetres' shortfall could be catastrophic. As a father of two, though, Rafael is a veteran baby jumper: he's the Evel Knievel of kiddies. 'The way I look at it is, nothing's ever happened before, so why should it happen to me?'

Of course, there's always a first time'

The altar boys lead us out the church, accompanied by the thunder of a drum and the clacking of the Devil's oversized castanet.

Outside, the village has been transformed into a baby obstacle course. Instead of bunting, the villagers have lined the street with sheets of elegant handmade lace hung from their windows.

The babies are already in position and ready to be jumped, whether they like it or not, lying on a chain of mattresses set out barely ten feet from each other in the road. Despite what Rafael told me, I had expected the mattresses to be shorter than average'baby-sized, even'with just a single row of infants scrunched toward the front, where they'd be less likely to get squashed.

However, these are full-sized mattresses'they really are six feet long'big enough to hold three babies in not one but two rows, so that the kids at the back are only inches from touchdown when the Colacho lands on the other side (hopefully). God forbid he should fall backwards.

Not only that, but the mattresses stand at least ten inches high; if the babies roll off, it's a straight drop to the tarmac; for an adult, it would be the equivalent of a three-foot tumble out of bed. 'Every once in a while a baby will roll off and bump its head, but it doesn't hurt them,' an elderly señora assures me. And if it does, well, every village needs an idiot.

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