Colin Byrne/Caddie's Role With a relatively lengthy break of three weeks from caddying, I decided to take myself down to the Costa del Golf of southern Spain for some sunshine.

A busman's holiday it may seem, but, tired of hobbling around courses plugged up with leisure golfers and built on terrain that would be barely manageable for a Sherpa or sure-footed goat, I decided to take to the hills in search of something more than the usual coastal fare of sun, sea, sand and slow golf.

As luck would have it the first of May Bank Holiday coincided with a local festival in the town of Coin, about half an hour north of Marbella, a long weekend Spanish style. There were all sorts of fiestas throughout the weekend, so the centre of town was closed to traffic, and locals drinking, eating, talking quickly and loudly replaced the cars on the street which were enveloped in loud music.

A bright sign with a hip-thrusting matador on it caught my eye as I looked for an escape from the street party. My timing was almost perfect to catch the evening corrida in the Coin Plaza de Tores at the top end of town. My only previous experience of bullrings in Spain were the exteriors of the Grand Arenas of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia and their coliseum-like elegance. I wasn't expecting the same spectacular structure in a town as small as this, but my initiation to bull fighting and all its pomp was decidedly unceremonious.

I had missed the first live bullfight but got there in time to see him being dragged out of the ring by a big old cart horse and dumped beside a JCB digger which hoisted him into the back of an open-top truck. Not quite the image I had conjured up of the old noble Iberian tradition. The back of his dead bull's neck glistened with blood where first the cuadrilla de picadores had pierced the bull's spleen, then the banderilleros and finally the matador had drained the final charge of life out of the beast.

As his beady eye stared vacantly at the Sierra Gorda mountain and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, he was raised out of the coffin he was destined for from the moment he was bred for this grand spectacle.

Due to my tardiness I had got a backward view of what the colourful poster had lured me towards in the first place, a dead bull dragging a trail of his blood in his wake. Shocked but undeterred, I made my way into the ring and took my place in the stadium. The surrounding buildings' top floors were full of people watching the show for free. The rest of us had shelled out €15 for the pleasure.

We got to feel the stadium shake as the bull made its initial charge from its pen. When the matadors' accomplices, in their sequined costumes, lured the bull towards them with their pink blankets there was a lot of scurrying going on.

First, one of the elderly ring rakers was caught slacking over his final bit of sand-smoothing after the first fight as the second bull came charging into the ring. He made a hasty exit for one of the gaps in the fence. Then the assistant bull fighters waved their blankets frantically and back-pedalled towards the gap as the bull became more interested in their bright clothes.

A few passes later in marched the picador, a portly man resembling my image of a large Don Quixote on rocinante. The horse was heavily padded from mane to hoof and blindfolded. Its rider had heavy casts protecting his legs and he carried a pick on a long stick with which he proceeded to launch into the bull between his shoulder blades while the bull was trying to up-end his horse. It looked like butchery on horse back.

The whole spectacle to the untrained eye seemed full of contradiction. The matador was undoubtedly performing a brave act and he gradually got the bull under his control. With elegant sways of his cape and high thrusts of his hips as the bull passed it resembled the interaction of two Flamenco dancers. He demanded total silence as he eyed up his kill with his sword for the final act as he waved at the brass band to cease the music.

The matador, with his thin leather slippers, pink stockings, sequined body-hugging costume and his hair gathered in a bun at the back of his head, looked extremely feminine in this seeming act of brave masculinity. The contrast could not have been greater between the second matador, Fernando Camara, and the third, Sanchez Vara. The former was as graceful, proud and confident as the latter was awkward, timid and, after four attempts to finally kill his bull, embarrassed.

Camara got to parade the ring acknowledging the appreciative crowd as indicated by their furious waving of white handkerchiefs. They threw their hats, coats and flowers into the ring as he passed like royalty. Vara got to slink out the side to avoid the crowd's silence.

A bull fight is not for animal lovers but a spectacle rich in culture and ceremony, well worth the visit for the tourist who wants a break from the Costa del Golf. After seeing a bull charging at a man dressed like a woman with only a cape as his defence, it left me

wondering why I ever got nervous over a three-foot downhill putt.