Pilgrim's Road

Burgos’. My sense of privacy felt seriously invaded, and I had quickly to remind myself that this too was a part of the pilgrimage. If people wanted to snap a colourful oddity as a memento of their visit to a town on the European Heritage Trail, why should I object? It did me no harm and it might inspire them, if not to go on pilgrimage then perhaps to try bicycling as a way of getting about.
    Another American woman, practising charity, thrust a tourist brochure of Burgos into my hand, saying ‘Here honey, we’ve finished with this, save yourself a few pesetas’. As I had arrived a good two hours before the tourist influx and had seen almost everything I wanted to in Burgos, I was soon able to ride away from all this embarrassing attention.
    Out in the western suburbs of Burgos I thought I would probably encounter another large crowd visiting the convent of Las Huelgas Reales, the second most famous attraction of Burgos. A Cistercian institution, it was founded in 1187 by Alfonso VII and his English wife Eleanor, daughter of Henry II, with the dual purpose of being a convent for nuns of royal and aristocratic lineage and a royal pantheon where kings could also be knighted. The place had expanded over the centuries like so many of the ancient buildings of Burgos and was now a pot-pourri of many styles. I particularly wanted to see the small Moorish chapel of Santiago, where a thirteenth-century statue of St James had a moveable sword arm, the purpose of which was to enable kings to be knighted by the saint, rather than by someone inferior in rank.
    There were no crowds or coaches around Las Huelgas Reales as it happened, because it was closed for the day. I had to make do with a circuit around the outside perimeter, and as a small consolation the Guardia Civil protecting the place stamped my certificación de paso , so at least I have a record of the convent’s coat of arms. A more solid consolation was an excellent menúdel día in a trucker’s restaurant in the western outskirts of the city — fish soup, a good large steak, ice-cream and coffee, all for just under six pounds.
    Quite close to the restaurant I found what is probably the most evocative of all Burgos’s monuments to the Camino — the medieval Hospital del Rey which had functioned as a pilgrim’s hospice for six hundred and forty years, until it was very badly damaged by fire in 1835. I was able to see something of it only because the workmen who had begun the huge task of restoring the building had left the entrance to the site open while they went off to lunch. The courtyard was in a ruinous state, but the portico of the church had been restored with its ornamentation of scallop shells and Santiago Matomoros at full stretch above. Of the original Gothic structure only the western entrance remains and this is known as the Pilgrims’ Portal — probably because the way to Santiago lies to the west. One of the masterly Renaissance wooden carvings on the door shows a small band of pilgrims walking the Camino. There is a family group among them, including a mother with a babe in arms and a young boy about the age of Kes. With them is what seems like a truly penitential ascetic pilgrim, barefoot and naked except for a loincloth. He seems to have a touch of sainthood about him already as he leans on his stout stick, his steady gaze fixed heavenward. Details of the clothing and footwear of the other pilgrims are faithfully reproduced, with staffs, gourds, scrips and shells much in evidence. It was a fascinating thing to come across and a most appropriate place to take to the road once more.
     

9
     
    The Wide and Arid Plains
     
    I RODE out of Burgos into an ever-widening plain. The sky above it was brilliantly blue and studded with bright, mackerel-coloured clouds. St James was still pushing me on from behind, and to be back on the Camino Francés again after the swirl and bustle of the town was like rejoining an old and much-loved friend. The next few days promised to be particularly rewarding, for the route would take me away from the N120, which had been the main thread of the journey since Logroño, and onto small country lanes where it would be rare to encounter a car at all. To travel the old narrow arteries of a country which modern road systems have relegated into byways always gives the illusion of having strayed back into an earlier century. On the Camino , with so many tangible remnants of its long
    and particular history, the