Pilgrim's Road

with hood pulled well forward over my peaked beret to keep the water from streaming into my eyes and obscuring my vision, I set out from St Jean-Pied-de-Port with a sense of high adventure which, under the circumstances, might well have seemed misplaced. The rain, the fact that I certainly looked faintly ridiculous, and that I had a twenty-mile uphill stretch before me, most of which I would probably have to walk, made not a scrap of difference. This was the Val Carlos, the Valley of Charlemagne, where the legends of the ‘Song of Roland’ had their beginnings, and I had already caught the mood of it. Troubadours, it is said, accompanied bands of medieval pilgrims singing chansons de geste from the ‘Song of Roland’. It was a time when the ideals of chivalry and religion had joined hands, each supporting the other, so that the two became somewhat confused. History found itself altered piecemeal in order to promote the myth that all great Christian kings and heroes had lived and died defending the Faith, rather than being primarily concerned with the preservation of their own realms and possessions. The Church itself was believed to have been instrumental in this bending of historical fact, and with precious little literacy outside of the monasteries this seems more than likely. I rather enjoyed the thought of monks and nuns composing these lovely, uplifting romances in their free time.
    It is hard for us in an age of mass media to appreciate the importance of songs and stories in medieval Europe, and to realise the tremendous influence they had on the beliefs and ideas of the time. The songs of chivalry were on a par with the tales of the heroic deeds of St James himself, both as Slayer of Moors and as Pilgrim Miracle Worker. It must have been an extremely difficult time to separate fact from fiction, even had people wanted to. What is certain is that the Santiago pilgrims found the chansons de geste a source of inspiration. A forest of crosses was said to grace the top of the pass where I was headed, carried there by pilgrims to honour Charlemagne who had himself placed a cross there, legend claimed, and then had knelt in prayer, his face towards St James’ shrine in distant Galicia. As the tomb of St James would not be discovered for another seventy years, this was as unlikely as the myth that Charlemagne was the first Santiago pilgrim. The same spot was also hallowed as the last stand of his great knight, Roland, slain by the perfidious Moors. But in reality, it was not Moors at all, but the wily Basques of Pamplona, fellow Christians in fact, who ambushed the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army. And in slaying the cream of his palanquins, including Roland and Oliver, they were merely getting their own back on the army that had razed their city walls on its way to a mercenary engagement between two Moorish rulers.
    But as I was soon to learn, faith is not necessarily based on dry historical fact, especially in relation to so celebrated a hero. And even nine centuries later, in full possession of the ‘facts’, it was the Charlemagne of popular legend who filled my thoughts as I rode away from St Jean, even though the road beside the sullen swollen river was evocative of nothing so romantic. A few drenched and dismal looking villages drooped over the further bank, and apart from that there was just the black streaming ribbon of tarmac and the dripping trees. I was still warm and dry in my waterproofs, however, and in the absence of a bona fide troubadour made my own music with a verse of ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’.
    The border came soon and suddenly with a right hand turn to cross the river. It proved to be a non-event. A French official waved me across from the shelter of his doorway, and as soon as I was over a Spanish official also gestured minimally for me to continue. Clearly female bicyclists were above suspicion, or not worth getting wet for. A sharp left brought me back on line and the climb proper began. I suppose there is some element of conceit in most of us. In me it takes the form of pretending that there is no real effort involved in tackling a steep incline, though I only do this when I think someone might be watching. I made a determined effort to push on until I was out of sight of the customs posts just in case someone was idly noting my progress from a window. By the time I judged I was out of sight, I was around the next bend, and heart, lungs and muscles had recovered a little from the