Pilgrim's Road

have raised such a child, at which I had to confess that whatever the world thought about it, I found very little to complain of in the way my son had chosen to live his life. ‘I should think not indeed,’ laughed Ilse. ‘What sort of example does his mother set him?’ And suddenly all three of us were laughing, gratefully, spinning it out, because humour was so wonderfully refreshing after all this dark serious talk of death. They had wanted to ask me in, confided Ilse before I left them, because with my bicycle and the dumpy little tent I summed up for Dirk the sense of freedom that sometimes pierced him like a knife when he remembered the long summers of his youth, riding or hiking through the German countryside with the whole of his life still before him.
    I asked them where they would be heading for after this, but they said they didn’t know, they just wanted to keep on moving as long as possible. They had reached the stage where they could no longer anticipate anything, even the next day, with any great certainty, but had to live each moment as it came — which, as I suddenly remembered, is what many religious disciplines consider to be the only way to live. Not that Ilse and Dirk had professed any religion; they were simply on a journey, as I was. Our paths had crossed, we had told each other our stories, and were ready to go our separate ways. When I struck camp the following morning, breakfasting on a cup of coffee and a slightly wrinkled orange, which was all I had left, their van was still shuttered and silent, so there were no farewells, but I thought about them often in the next few days, and although they hadn’t asked it of me, I added them to the growing list of those to pray for in Compostela.
     

3
     
    Soft Southern Lands
     
    T HE intimate countryside of the Bergerac wines made me realise afresh just how lucky I was to have discovered the bicycle as a means of long-distance travel. The close little valleys with their winding narrow roads and vine-clad hills crowned with modest stone chateaux, all of which could be seen to perfection at ten miles an hour, were far too tortuous and on far too small a scale to be enjoyed by motor car. The whole area was a little world apart, and would have been missed altogether on anything like a proper road. But with the sun shining, the pedals spinning round with just enough effort to match my energy, and no motorised traffic to mask the scents of the countryside or to drown the birdsong, I felt a sense of peace with myself and with the world about me that I rarely achieve in the frenetic bustle of modern life.
    A short stretch of tree-shaded back lanes brought me at length down to the River Garonne at La Réole, a charming small town, slightly rackety and run down at one end, but graced with streets of well-preserved medieval houses at the other. A very large and ornate seventeenth-century Benedictine abbey at the centre of the old quarter had been converted into the Hôtel de Ville , lending the sleepy place a rather lopsided air of importance, as though recalling its days of grandeur when the English kings, through marriage and inheritance, owned practically as much land in France as did the French crown; when this town had been at the hub of things, and had played host to Richard Coeur de Lion and later to Edward the Black Prince.
    It played host to me too in a small grassy campement beside the broad, brown Garonne, which looked particularly welcoming to a tired traveller in the late afternoon sun. The site was officially closed, but the concierge said she would turn a blind eye to a one-night stopover, as long as I did not make myself conspicuous. With the site plainly visible from the town, and the river front open to all, including half a dozen patient fishermen who seemed to be permanent fixtures, I didn’t quite see how my presence could go unnoticed. Also, finding hot and cold water conveniently to hand in the as yet unfinished sani block, I could not resist a general rinsing out of sweaty clothing, which had then to be strung out to dry on the guy lines, where they considerably raised the profile of my discreet, low, green tent.
    I compromised by removing myself from the scene, and with that virtuous feeling that comes from having completed even such minimum and prosaic chores, left the place to the anglers and crossed back over the suspension bridge into La Réole in search of a stamp for my pilgrim record and an evening meal. Neither proved