Pilgrim's Road

were already gone; and so, I now realised, was my toolbag. A cyclist’s tool kit is a very precious and personal thing, assembled over many years, and with items highly customised for particular jobs: it wasn’t just an attractive cycle accessory that was gone, but a well-tried friend. I wouldn’t even be able to repair a puncture until I’d bought immediate and essential replacements. Annoying though it was, however, and hard thoughts though I certainly harboured against my fellow pilgrim (and as there was no one else in the convent except for the nuns, whom I could not suspect, I think she must have been the culprit), nonetheless, the incident gave quite an authentic medieval twist to the day, and in an odd way it supplied something of the connection with the past which I had felt was lacking. If there were still rogues preying on pilgrims on The Road to Compostela, who, or what, might I not meet as I travelled along it?
     

2
     
    To be a Pilgrim
     
    A N implacable headwind, one of the worst conditions for cycling, made the going hard for the first few days. It was cold too, and altogether more like winter than early spring. Tall poplars lined the country roads, their bare branches hung with huge round balls of dark green mistletoe which added to the feeling of having strayed into an earlier season. Behind them the raw empty fields ran back to ancient, grey, sagging homesteads.
    I had spent the previous six months finishing the manuscript of a book, and the long hours at my desk had not been good either for my cycling muscles or my general fitness. The older I get the more I realise the value of taking regular daily exercise, but as soon as I begin writing the task becomes so absorbing that there never seem to be sufficient hours in the day to get even the necessary things done, and my good resolutions are forgotten. Now I was paying the price, and even on Roberts, my excellent new bicycle, so well provided with low gears, I was finding it heavy going on the sharp little hills and was wondering if I was perhaps getting past the age for such vigorous physical exertions. To make matters worse a thin rain fell frequently, enough for me to have to ride in waterproofs. Modern wet weather clothing is supposed to ‘breathe’ and so prevent the rider becoming overheated, but I have never found any that stood up to this claim. Either the rain begins to seep through after an hour or two, or, if they are efficient at keeping the weather out they also make the rider sweat and become just as wet from condensation. Mine were definitely overheating.
    Where my route sometimes left the lanes to follow more major roads, camions thundered closely alongside, tossing me about like a feather in the turbulence of their wake. Several times I was blown right off the tarmac, and only just managed to keep the bicycle upright and out of the ditch. In such conditions it made a break to reach a town and shop around for tools to replace my stolen set. Oddly enough in a country where the bicycle has always occupied a place of honour I wasn’t able to find a single ‘real’ bicycle shop, but only modern motorcycle showrooms which included a small corner for the humbler machine. Everything in these smart emporia was expensively packaged, and the prices of perfectly ordinary spanners, tyre levers, alien keys and the like quite shocked me, so that I bought only the barest of necessities. It was as well that these included a puncture repair kit, because the following day I had a flat on a busy stretch of road, miles from anywhere.
    I would not normally attempt to mend a puncture in the rain, but would simply fit a spare inner tube and do the repair at my leisure in the evening. Alas, both spare inners had been with my tools in the stolen bag; once again I experienced a strong unchristian twinge of animosity towards the thief, whoever it was. The puncture was small and difficult to find without a bowl of water in which to spot the tell-tale bubbles of escaping air. A rain puddle can serve for this purpose, but in spite of the continuing drizzle there were no useful pools when I needed them. Fortunately I had my small aluminium cooking pan and enough water in the drinking bottle to just cover the tube and so was eventually able to locate the hole. After that it was plain sailing, except for the difficulty of keeping the tube dry while I glued on the patch. I could not find what had caused the puncture, and this worried me: from past