Pilgrim's Road

initial shock of exertion. There was no reason not to try to make it to the next corner and having managed that I carried on to the next one. At each bend the gradient steepened, and I thought I had reached my limit, and I would have to get off and walk. But every time a fresh burst of energy got me round it, and then as the gradient eased a little I found myself able to continue to the next corner. The only traffic was an occasional lorry, piled high with tree trunks, and also grinding its way with difficulty around the hairpin bends. The knowledge that I was not alone in finding the going tough was a further spur to effort.
    About halfway up I had the distinct impression that it was St James himself who was pushing me on from behind. It wasn’t a blinding revelation, or anything that seemed particularly out of the ordinary at that stage, just the sense of a kindly, practical, no-nonsense sort of character lending a helping hand; a feeling that grew on me gradually. Several times I was almost on the point of turning around to thank him, and it was only later that I thought of this as odd, for I did not for a moment believe that St James had ever set foot in Spain, dead or alive.
    But there are strange powers attached to places that cannot be rationally explained. Certain tiny islands in the Hebrides where the Celtic monks built their cells have this aura; the ruins of the Monastery of Sumela in Eastern Turkey, Lindisfarne and many other similar holy places also possess it strongly. Equally, the sites of really hideous deeds appear to have the reverse of it, and to repel people, even those who have come there by chance and have no idea of the grim events that were enacted in the place. The sense of a benign presence that I experienced on the ascent of the Pyrenees was not uncommon I was to discover later. Lots of modern pilgrims have felt it too, and although equally sceptical have, without thinking, called it St James. And if this is a case of balancing belief and disbelief in either hand, so be it.
    In spite of the rain, which continued off and on but never stopped long enough for me to remove my rain gear, the climb out of the green valley of Charlemagne was beautiful. The road loops through broadleaved forest for most of the way, and the acres of tender green leaves gave a feeling of abundance and renewal. But it was the climb itself that brought the real pleasure. In spite of the help from St James I was stretched to the full, and whether or not it is true that hard physical exercise causes the brain to produce endorphin which has the same effect as a euphoric drug, I certainly felt elated. By the time I reached the summit at Ibañeta, where Roland and Oliver fell and where the medieval age of romance and chivalry had its beginnings, I felt on top of the world in more ways than one.
    This could well have proved my undoing, for overheated as I was from the climb, I should have had the sense to seek shelter, or at least to pile on more clothes to counteract the drop in body temperature that follows closely upon such exertion. Instead I wandered about the bleak rain-drenched open summit, trying to make out from the few stones left in the turf, the ground plan of the monastery Charlemagne had founded at the historical site.
    Coming up the sheltered eastern face of the mountain I had been unaware of the strong westerly wind, but in this exposed spot it blew with the mournful urgency of Roland’s famous horn.
    On that fateful day in 778 AD he had blown it to no avail, for Charlemagne and the main body of the army were already down in the valley, unable to come back to the aid of the rearguard in time. The conditions, I thought, were absolutely right for filming the scene: the grey Celtic light, the rain slanting viciously on the wind and the huge strewn boulders, any of which could have been the fragments of the one split by Roland’s mighty sword as he vainly sought to smash the blade before he died.
    I was drenched through and shivering before I realised that the conditions were also right for the onset of pneumonia. Fortunately Roncesvalles is only a short distance beyond the summit, but even so I was almost blinded by the sharp horizontal rain before I got down to it. The acres of depressing corrugated zinc which roofs the monastery which met me as I turned the corner were in no sense a disappointment, for they spelled welcome shelter.
    A small inn, Casa Sabina , stood beside the sprawling monastic buildings