Pilgrim's Road

constantly to redefine what the word pilgrim meant. It was something that I should have liked to discuss with Harrie.
    But the church of La Peregrina would have made a deep impression even without these associations, and I like to think that I would have recognised it for a Franciscan foundation even had I not known it was one. The choice of the site overlooking the city, and the deceptive simplicity of design, coupled with the massive scale of the walls, were typically Franciscan. And beyond the melancholy that hangs over all abandoned buildings there was also a sense of gentle pervading sadness that not even the Mudéjar architecture could hide, and which always seems to mark buildings connected with St Francis. He must have been here himself, for he made a pilgrimage to Santiago in 1214.
    I hadn’t wanted to eat my midday meal in Sahagún, and as the day had warmed up a little I bought food for a picnic instead. As soon as I was clear of the town, I stopped for the second time that day by the side of the road to boil up my kettle and to set out my meal of bread, anchovies, olives, tomatoes and fruit. A meal is a natural time for counting blessings, which is perhaps how the custom of saying a grace before meals began. But rather than thankfulness for the food, I found myself thinking about the people I had met on this pilgrimage, especially since crossing the Pyrenees. On no other journey could I remember so many warm encounters. Even quite casual exchanges had so often seemed to carry an extra quality, a gratuitous kindness — like buying a stamp an hour before in Sahagún’s post office where the clerk shyly tried out his few words of English, purely, I felt at the time, to make me feel at home. Since these roadside halts were also opportunities for writing up my notes, I find mixed in among the descriptions of Sahagún, musings about fellow pilgrims and people encountered along the way, and at the end of the jumble is the question, ‘Is this why the Camino is like no other road?’
    It was to be the last interval for quiet reflection that I would enjoy for the next few hours. After lunch conditions deteriorated immediately. The brief golden spell which had burnished the brick of Sahagún’s ancient churches had disappeared behind low grey cloud. The Camino proper had taken off on its lonely cross-country route where once wolves devoured pilgrims rash enough to be travelling alone. Even without the wolves, it had remained an empty quarter, traversed only by a parlous track that was not negotiable with a laden touring bicycle. I am pleased to say that this sad state of affairs has since been rectified with the extensive rebuilding and resurfacing of this section of the Camino. Cyclists need no longer dice with death as I did that afternoon on one of the most horrible trunk roads it has ever been my misfortune to hazard my life.
    The N120 was bad enough, but when I turned right onto the N601 I could only think that I was being required to serve my term in purgatory immediately. Aggravated by a vicious side wind, the wash from the great roaring trucks was almost more than I could cope with, and Roberts shied and skittered about like an unbroken colt. Finally, the inevitable happened; in the wash of a particularly huge speeding monster Roberts and I became temporarily airborne, left the road altogether and landed in scrubland quite a way to our right, my head missing a large boulder by a hair’s breadth. A farm worker, the only other cyclist I had seen all day, had been riding close behind me making the most of the small bit of shelter I offered and he stopped to disentangle me from Roberts. To the surprise of us both, I think, I proved to be unscathed except for a bruised thigh. I continued on to Mansilla trying to sing ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’ to give me courage.
    Mansilla de las Mulas has the substantial remains of its medieval adobe walls still in place and, apart from the intrusion of the N601 which thunders through the middle of it, is a peaceful little town beside the River Esla, with storks nesting in a couple of towers left from some ancient building, the bulk of which has vanished. This was where I intended to spend the night if I could locate the refugio , not always an easy task. After asking several people, the owner of the flower shop sent me off with her young son on his bike to escort me to the priest’s house. As is the way with small boys, he called out to his friends along the way, so