Pilgrim's Road

it seemed to me that risk and adventure are as essential to sport as they are to pilgrimage, so in that sense all the motives had some bearing on the journey, as well as others that were not included — like curiosity and love of travel.
    My form filling being judged satisfactory, the father shook my hand and gave me a new pilgrim’s passport, impressively entitled Credencial del Peregrino which had been duly stamped and signed. This he explained would enable me to lodge at the refugios in the towns and villages along the way. It would also entitle me to meals at reduced prices in certain places (I never discovered any of these places, but I was also never in such a state of penury as to need them). On arrival in Santiago, he added, I would be examined by the cathedral authorities and if I was found worthy would be granted my Compostela and would then be able to celebrate with free meals at the prestigious Hospital de los Reyes Católicos, built for pilgrims by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and which was now a five-star hotel.
    The little ceremony over, Don Javier prepared to escort me to the monastery’s refugio. Unfortunately the excess of exercise and the heavy red wine at lunch had made my knees rather rubbery. As I collected Roberts it somehow got off balance and fell over with both the little monk and myself mixed up with it. After we had picked ourselves up, Don Javier firmly took charge of the cycle, wheeling it along with great caution and at arm’s length. A colleague called out something to him which seemed to be in the nature of a jest at the unusual sight, and he replied with a backward nod at me — that the ‘poor thing was exhausted with her journey’. Which was certainly better than being suspected of being over the limit, even if I wouldn’t have been the first pilgrim to have had a glass too many.
    The Roncesvalles refugio does not live up to the reputation for comfort of its medieval forerunner. It is housed in an older part of the complex from the monks’ quarters, on a higher level and approached through ancient, draughty stone corridors roughly floored with cobble stones laid in primitive, fanshaped patterning. An oak stairway, its thick wide planks sloping with age, led to two dormitories. Both were closely packed with three-tiered metal bunks, and each was illuminated by a single tiny window. There was a small inner hall furnished with a long table and benches, where a few naked, low-wattage lightbulbs pierced the gloom. An archaic, lethal-looking gas water-heater hung on a wall of the tiny kitchen, which otherwise contained nothing but two saucepans with holes in them, a couple of chairs and an empty hearth. The monk advanced a match to the geyser which immediately exploded with a loud and ominous report. Bravely he tried again, and with admirable perseverance, finally persuaded it to function; after which he was able to demonstrate proudly that there was now a supply of hot water to the spartan little washroom next door. Informing me that mass would be at eight, I was then left to my own devices.
    In spite of the cold and the general lack of comfort I felt there was a sense of rightness about the pilgrim lodgings in Roncesvalles that was not entirely of the hair shirt variety. The chilly air and the dank weather could not dispel the romance of centuries. If threads of troubadour song had drifted about the rafters, together with the strains of a distant hurdy-gurdy it would not have seemed out of place. From the tiny window of the dormitory I could see out over a large part of the monastery site. The rain was still lashing down on the undeniably grim corrugated roofs. Beneath them, by contrast, the worked stone of the walls assumed a delicacy and beauty, particularly the west wall of the collegiate church with its lovely rose window. The whole place was redolent of the times and events that had shaped it. Vulnerable and threadbare now, it had faced twelve centuries of changing fortunes, including the rabble of scores of barbarous armies passing through on their missions of invasion and reprisal. That it had survived all this and still offered shelter to the pilgrims of today’s materialistic world seemed little short of miraculous. I felt it an honour to be there, and donning my damp waterproofs went out to explore the rest of it.
    The mouldering arcades eventually led me to a dank late Gothic cloister of modest size whose wet upper walls sprouted clumps of varied plant life. A