‘There is a kind of camping feeling in the village, where you just don’t walk in together with a toilet roll under your arm.’ According to Peggy Wolfraad (31), who helps with the last party preparations in the narrow village square on Thursday morning, the Four Days Marches party in Cuijk is ‘magical’. ‘It starts off quietly, but at the end of the evening the chairs move to the side and everyone dances from their tralala.’
In the surrounding villages that the Nijmegen Four Days Marches is visiting this week, there is a real Four Days Marches madness. This is also the case in the Brabant village on the Maas, Cuijk, where the walkers will be whipped up by partying villagers on Friday on ‘the day of Cuijk’ for their last kilometers towards the finish.
On Thursday morning, entrepreneurs and residents of Cuijken saunter through a still deserted village street, where especially the white party tents and mobile beer taps betray that something is about to happen. By evening it will probably be rows thick. Then the Defense Forces march through the village for the 77th time, handing out stickers and decals that the villagers will keep for years to come. As soon as they pass under the bridge, they reach the flag-decorated Maaskade where the Four Days Marches Orchestra plays them. There, while paratroopers whirl from the sky, they lay down the pontoon bridge that should bring the walkers to Gelderland on Friday.
Infused with traditions
‘A classic’, Cuijkenaar Hans Poels (44) calls it. The event is steeped in traditions that everyone in the village knows. Especially the girls who run after the tough soldiers are notorious. ‘And every year one of the paratroopers landing at the pontoon bridge accidentally falls into the water’, says Poels. “But coincidentally with a wetsuit.”
On Thursday morning, the Maaskade is still empty, except for a large stage, a bbq tent, bars and toilet blocks. Only village councillor Frans Bus (76) and his wife quickly put up an advertising banner before they go to the town hall to receive a delegation from the Czech Republic, together with the mayor, who visits especially for the festivities. ‘The conviviality is very important for the village’, says Bus. “There’s no one here who stays home Friday.”
The Cuijk party also attracts audiences from the rest of the area. On Thursday morning, four four-day tourists sit on the terrace decorated with colorful festive lighting. They cycled here especially for the parties from Sint-Oedenrode and Boekel, 40 and 25 kilometers away respectively. ‘Everyone from this area knows someone from the Four Days Marches Orchestra that is performing tonight’, says Wil van Asseldonk (62), who has attended parties here three times before and has been planning to come back every year since then.
Party week for the whole village
The Cuijkse party tradition, in which the village festival is combined with the passage, has been around since the eighties. The fire was once started by the local fire brigade, who always threw a party during the passage, says Jan van der Heijden (83) in the local historic center. ‘Later, people got up and made it a festival week for the whole village.’
Although the party tradition, which is comparable to carnival, has been around for years, this year the organization was more difficult than usual. The village’s four-day committee stopped at the beginning of 2020, which put the municipality in a split now that the festivities were allowed to continue. ‘On the one hand, we wanted the party to be organised, because it is very important for Cuijk and the surrounding area,’ says Wim Hillenaar (CDA), acting mayor of Land van Cuijk. ‘But you also want to avoid everyone thinking: ‘The municipality will arrange it.’
The fact that it eventually succeeded is due to an ‘extremely good cooperation’ between the municipality, volunteers and the entrepreneurs, says center manager and co-organizer Clemens Binkhorst (42). The result: a packed party week.
On the Maaskade, Binkhorst is watching the orchestra’s sound check from a distance. He has ‘no stress’ because everything has been arranged for the arrival of the Defense pontoonniers and the walkers. “I don’t even have to look back, everyone has done so well.”