Pilgrim's Road

church. The present structure is sixteenth century, extensively restored in recent times, but the ancient battered tombs of the kings, illuminated by a suitable greenish light, rest in a grotto beneath the choir carved out of the rock of the cliffs. In a side chapel is the later twelfth-century tomb of Queen Doña Blanca of Pamplona who died giving birth to a future King of Castile. It is one of the most beautifully carved tombs I have seen outside of Greece. Most of it is biblical scenes, but one panel shows Doña Blanca’s soul slipping from her body in the form of a little child. The tombs were only a part of the charm of the place, however. The whole building had an unusual quality of space and harmony that I hadn’t encountered so far on the journey. Possibly this was because it was in the care of the Franciscans and reflected something of their founder’s simplicity.
    Between Nájera and Santo Domingo de la Calzada is one of the stretches that will draw me back to repeat the pilgrimage one day. For I saw none of its attractions, nor did I make any of the traditional diversions to interesting tombs, villages and monasteries off the route. It was possible only to battle on head down and concentrate on turning the pedals.
    My reward for perseverance was to finish the day at the most comfortable refugio of the route, where the sybaritic delight of a hot shower did much to restore my flagging spirits. Santo Domingo de la Calzada is the sainted bridge-builder’s own town; the place where he had his hermit’s cell and where in 1109 he finally died. The bridge he built is still in place across the river and his tomb is in the cathedral that stands at the head of the pilgrim’s way, with its lofty tower visible from afar. All of which makes him seem very much a real person, something I don’t necessarily feel about all saints, especially some of the more obscure ones.
    Of course, had Santo Domingo been merely an inspired builder of roads, bridges, pilgrim hospices and churches, the matter would have ended with his death. Sainthood requires miracles and on that score Santo Domingo acquits himself satisfactorily. But the most famous miracle connected with the town is sometimes ascribed to the intervention of St James himself. Who ever gets the final credit for it, however, the miracle known as the ‘pendu dépendu ’ (the hanged man unhanged) is still celebrated in quite the most bizarre fashion.
    The story concerns an aged couple and their teenage son who are passing through Santo Domingo on their way to Santiago. The son is wrongly accused of theft by a servant girl whose advances he rejects. After the young man has been wrongfully hanged for the offence, the sorrowing parents continue to Santiago where they make their offerings at the shrine. On the return journey, when they are again in Santo Domingo, they cast their eyes up to the gibbet where their son is hanging, and to their amazement he speaks to them. St James has intervened on his behalf and restored him to life (or St Domingo has kept him alive because of his innocence). Whichever was the case, the stunned parents run straight round to the magistrate who ordered the execution to inform him of the startling new facts of the case. He is at his dinner at the time, a fat hen and a capon nicely roasted before him, and he replies sarcastically that if the boy is still alive after all this time then so are these fowls which he is about to eat. At which point the cock and hen both leap up from the platter (fully fledged again presumably) and set up a great crowing and cackling.
    The lovely interior of the cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada is full of treasures, not least the saint’s exquisite late Gothic tomb. And high on a wall quite close to it is probably the most ornate hen coop ever occupied by a very live pair of white domestic fowl. They are said to be descendants of those same roast fowls that had so miraculous a resurrection, and their feathers are sought after with the same fervour that our ancestors once collected the relics of saints. But somehow they do not portray the same feeling of reality as St Domingo himself, and as for the raucous cock a doodle doo that echoes through the church, even at such moments as the elevation of the host, I think that requires more powers of disassociation than I possess. I was, however, pleased to learn that the birds were not condemned to a life sentence in their gilded cage, but served only a six-week