Pilgrim's Road

octagonal churches were modelled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and were usually the work of the Knights Templar. But although the Templars flourished in Navarre, many guide books wrongly ascribe this church to them. It was, in fact, built by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, the Hospitallers, and was once part of a pilgrim hospital. I could see little resemblance to the Holy Sepulchre, apart from the basic shape. The lovely external arcading forming a cloister all around Eunate gives it a unique delicate quality, earning for it its Basque name meaning ‘Church of the Hundred Doorways’.
    As I sat there enjoying the beauty and serenity of the place, and thinking that it would be a good idea to boil the kettle for a cup of coffee, a bus drew up and a class of ten-year-old Spanish school children poured out chirping like a bunch of excited starlings. It was a sudden and rude return to the twentieth century, and their keen interest in me after their teacher pointed me out as a peregrina — a live pilgrim specimen for their history lesson — was anything but welcome. But just in time I remembered the moment at Roncesvalles when I had accepted the role; this too was clearly a part of it. Nor was it any use worrying about what sort of figure I cut for these young Spaniards. At least they could see at first hand that there were people who still journeyed the ancient road by other means than fast cars and buses. To judge from the cans of pop and the bags of crisps which were thrust towards me from all directions, I concluded I had not come across too badly. Numerous snapshots were also taken of the laden Roberts with his scallop shells, and a tape recorder was produced for an interview. Unfortunately the language barrier proved too much for both children and me, and their teacher had to extract the information in French. It was my age that seemed to impress them most. ‘Over fifty and cycling all the way from England!’ their teacher translated. The round eyes and exclamations of amazement said it all.
    Two miles after Eunate and I had come to Obanos and the joining of the four ways. From this point a single road continues to the shrine of Santiago, and to mark the significance of the place a modern statue of a medieval pilgrim stands facing the distant goal. Barely another mile travelled and yet a further delight for the eyes. This is the Puente la Reina, the medieval bridge spanning the River Arga. A charitable queen had it built sometime in the eleventh century out of pity for the pilgrims who found the river a great hazard with its flash floods and villainous ferrymen. There is nothing in the least ornate about the bridge, just a slender bow of stone rising high to cross the water in one clean, pure line. But it made me catch my breath in wonder that something so simply utilitarian could achieve so satisfying a form.
    So important was the bridge as a crossing place that by the thirteenth century a walled town, also called Puente la Reina had sprung up beside it, bustling with trade. The modern road by-passes this, but the Road to Santiago enters through a vaulted passageway that becomes the narrow main street, the Calle Mayor. Like a member of a masonic cult I was directed by special signs, in my case yellow arrows handpainted on kerbstones or on the corners of walls, inconspicuous but charged with significance. They joined me to the invisible army that had trodden these cobble stones before me, and I found the way suddenly much expanded and full of meaning. The heavily shadowed alleyway runs between Romanesque churches and houses with Gothic doorways. Nothing is obviously restored or preserved which makes it all the more redolent of the Middle Ages. A final arrow pointed me out through the walls and onto the narrow Puente la Reina, but had even one of the town’s famous churches been open I could have spent at least half a day there.
    It was the same problem at Cirauqui, a small hilltop village a little further along. Cirauqui doesn’t actually straddle the route, the path skirts around the bottom of it, but nonetheless it is so ancient and interesting, so full of remarkable architecture that it would be difficult to ignore. And having begun to unravel its steep cobbled streets, spiralling up through arched gateways crowned with armorial crests, its terraces and plazas, and its thirteenth-century churches, I found I had spent a couple of hours there. Clearly the Road to Santiago possessed an embarrassment