Pilgrim's Road

sense of wonder in a museum. In Cebreiro’s little church, where Arthurian legend has so closely woven itself into the Christian story, there is something very special, and certainly nowhere is more evocative of the age of medieval pilgrimage.
    If I wanted to spend the night at Cebreiro, and I most certainly did, I had the choice of my tent or one of the pallozas that served as a refugio. I chose the latter without hesitation, but was able, by special favour, to have a much-needed bath in the hotel before the luxury of an evening meal. Most of the four or five rooms there had been reserved for Spanish men who were working on the electricity supply of the hamlet, and who lived too far away to go home at night. The only remaining room had been taken by Guy and Michèle, a young French couple who were also on their way to Santiago by car and whom I had already met in the church. They invited me to share their table so that we could talk about the journey. Guy taught history at a Paris school and Michèle worked in a bookshop, and neither had known much about the pilgrimage before setting out — but already they had decided that the car was no way to see it properly, and were determined to do part of it again in the summer by bicycle. I could see Michèle giving me occasional surreptitious glances, and I imagined her thinking, ’If she can do it at her age, I certainly can,’ a thought I did my best to encourage.
    The meal was roast pig and chips, which was a speciality of the region — the pig anyway — and quite delicious, and with it we drank what was probably a local wine, though as it came in a jug rather than a bottle we couldn’t tell. The local men were drinking cider. It was so late by the time the pudding of crème caramel (the national dish of Spain, I think, since I had it at nearly every meal) was eaten and the wine was finished that I thought I had better forego coffee in the interests of sleep, and take a little walk to shake down the rich food.
    When I went outside, however, I found it was already dark, and raining lightly also, so I made for my palloza instead, armed with candles and torch. Roberts was to share it with me so I would be reverting to dual occupancy of a sort. As I passed between the other pallozas , an elderly woman came out of one and said something to me in Spanish which I did not understand, but as she accompanied her words with gestures of eating I realised she was offering me food. I was able to thank her for the offer in Spanish, but I too had to resort to mime to convey the information that I had eaten already. She would not let me go, however, before she had pressed a couple of tiny apples into my hand. I had only caught a limited view into the yellow-lit interior behind her, just enough to gain a vague impression of cosiness, a refuge from the dark wet night. I wished afterwards that I had been able to ask to see how it was furnished.
    My palloza looked enormous by flickering candlelight, with the rough beams supporting the thatch high above my head lost, like Roberts, among the shadows. There was nothing at all in the place other than the straw strewn over the stone floor. It was like a rustic hall of unknown antiquity, and very cold — which was small wonder since Cebreiro stands at around the 1300-metre mark. The straw rustled with movements other than mine, but I had wrapped the tent snugly around my sleeping bag and felt reasonably secure from rats: mice I don’t really mind, and anyway I would have put up with a lot worse for the adventure of sleeping in this stone-age refuge. I propped myself up on my elbow for a while to read the enormous pilgrims’ logbook. As usual there were entries in many languages. Most of what I could read spoke in some sense of ‘finding the real Camino in this place’, a sentiment I shared.
    As I pulled the coverings tightly around me and prepared for sleep, I wondered if the rain would persist and obliterate this, my third and final mountain range of the journey, as had happened with the other two. Galicia is often referred to as ‘the land of the umbrella’ so it was with some trepidation that I poked my head out of the palloza as soon as I awoke the following morning. The skies were not only clear, but flushed so softly with a suggestion of pink and gold that it was like the subtle wash in a Japanese print. I pulled on my clothes quickly and went out for a wider view. Around the back of the village past the church and the granite