Pilgrim's Road

battle for personal survival and examine my surroundings. The exuberant froth of stone ornamentation across the Arlanzon River was no bad way to take a first long look at Burgos, a city whose buildings certainly appeared to be in keeping with its reputation.
    Burgos had been the first capital of Old Castile, the centre of the Reconquest and of vital importance to the Santiago pilgrimage. Its influence had waned gradually with the Christian advance southwards, until in 1492 it lost its place to Valladolid, which became the unified Spain’s new capital. But with the considerable wealth from its wide fertile plains, Burgos had continued to thrive and to embellish its monuments, and the pilgrimage had continued to flow through it with its attendant trade. Unlike Logroño, modernity had not eclipsed Burgos. From where I stood I could see a fine substantial pilgrim city rising above the splendid gateway.
    If I wanted to enter the city by the traditional pilgrim route, however, I could not go in through this sixteenth-century gate of Puerta de Santa María, but needed to retrace my way westward to the smaller medieval gate of San Juan. I was glad I did this, for nowhere on the route are there more architectural treasures of various periods of the pilgrimage than along this half-mile of the old city of Burgos, and the maze of ancient streets that have been allowed to remain unwidened added greatly to the pleasure.
    At the end of this half-mile stands the wonderfully spired and pinnacled cathedral. My guide book waxed lyrical about this church, claiming that it showed the true genius of Spanish architecture. But possibly I had seen far too much excellent architecture already for one day and should have spent more time there. For although I too fell for the fairy-tale charm of Burgos’s ‘Queen of Gothic Cathedrals’, I also found it difficult to take seriously. Nowhere, outside of Germany and Austria, and perhaps not even there, had I seen a building quite so magnificently overdone. It is the result of many rebuildings and embellishments in which each successive architect seems to have striven to outdo his predecessor. The outcome is a greater wealth of spires, finials, crockets, buttresses and stone lacework than I would have believed possible in a single building. ‘Marvellous stonework,’ my journal notes, ‘but somehow the total effect doesn’t inspire as churches do which rely more on a total harmony — like Salisbury, Chartres or Durham.’
    The centre point of the interior of Burgos Cathedral is the vast stone lantern of tremendous grace and ingenuity, but it is difficult to see properly because a visitor can no longer stand directly beneath it. The underlying genius of the original Gothic structure has been destroyed by a large, totally enclosed and slab-like choir which takes up most of the nave and intrudes into the crossing. The sense of space, the long perspectives and the harmony of line have been totally eclipsed by this intrusion. It is a wonderfully rich place, but it feels more like a major museum of religious art than a living church, and it made me eager to return to the reality and freedom of the Camino.
    Outside again in the sunshine I was about to unchain Roberts from the railings when a man with a bundle of guide books in his hand approached. ‘Don’t leave your bicycle here,’ he warned. ‘There are many thieves about. I will look after it for you, while you visit the cathedral.’ I was trying to explain that I had a lock and was quite all right, when an American voice cut in, ‘Don’t you give him anything, he’s a crook’, and an argument broke out around me about the price of a guide book he was selling. I hurriedly stowed away the lock and retreated.
    While I had been visiting the cathedral, several coach loads of visitors had arrived and there were now people milling thickly about the square in front of the cathedral, their large brash vehicles providing incongruous additions to the scene. This was my first encounter on the journey with tourism on any scale, and as a Londoner, well used to constant influxes of foreign visitors, I was surprised to find how strange it seemed after just a few weeks on the Camino. It was as though I had begun to identify with another and earlier time. I found it even more bizarre when people wanted to photograph me with Roberts, making sure they got the scallop shells well to the fore. The result would probably be captioned ‘An English Pilgrim in