Pilgrim's Road

the enormous barrel-vaulted, eighteenth-century church particularly depressed me. It appeared to be entirely without windows and so still and airless that, huge and rich as it was, it seemed like a tomb, and a sudden surge of claustrophobia made me beat a hasty retreat back to the fresh air.
    It transpired that my tour had been the result of mistaken identity. Part of the monastery operates an hotel now and the monk had been expecting a group of people and thought I was in advance of the main party. The coach carrying these guests arrived just as I was trying to make my escape, and so I was left to discover the most enchanting monument in Samos on my own. The site of the original monastery lies outside the walls of the present complex, hidden in a small muddy copse. There was nothing to indicate its whereabouts, nor did I quite know what to expect. I thought I had gone the wrong way, until, suddenly, I came upon it, a tiny and wonderfully primitive slate chapel dwarfed by massive pines, one of which pressed so closely against it that it would seem to threaten the fabric. There was such a sense of antiquity about this homely little building and — as at Cebreiro — such a sense of rightness that it was hard to believe it had any connection with the grandiose pile which had supplanted it.
    I had been thinking of spending the night at the monastery’s refugio but now I decided to push on another eight miles to the town of Sarria. This proved a happy choice. The old town, which was an important pilgrim centre in medieval times, is a quiet backwater now perched on top of a hill. Although nothing much remained there of architectural merit, the place was redolent of the pilgrimage with its castle ruins and acres of quiet semi-rural decay in which stood a small Romanesque church and the former hospital and monastery of La Madalena still offering a shelter to pilgrims.
    Climbing up to it I passed a small antique building which was being restored, and when I stopped to look more closely was much amused to read on the plaque that it had been a jail where reprobate pilgrims were locked up.
    A small girl accompanied me for the last few hundred yards after I had stopped to ask her where I could find the refugio. She was a competent child of about eight or nine who absolutely refused to accept that my Spanish was as bad as I claimed. With admirable perseverance she succeeded in getting me to understand that her brother went to the school next door to the monastery, and that he played football with one of the brothers. I think she was glad of the opportunity to visit this male sanctum and insisted on bringing me right to the door; even ringing the bell and waiting to explain to whoever opened it that I was a pilgrim. Perhaps she had done it all before as the brother who came to the door seemed less charmed by her than I had been and sent her on her way quite curtly.
    It was a very simple refugio , just one large room which was already occupied by three French families with some fourteen children between them, all under ten, and most of them scurrying around like small demons. But though this might sound rather daunting, and certainly seemed so at first, it proved a most entertaining evening. The three families were friends who were doing the pilgrimage by degrees; a certain amount each holiday. They had taken two years over it and were now on the final stage. At least two of the youngest offspring had been born since the start of the venture. But just like the pilgrims carved on the door at Burgos, they had not let babes-in-arms change their plans.
    Each family had an old, workman-like van packed tight with bedding, cooking gear, stores and clothing. Their method of travel was that as many as could — or wanted to — walked, while the adults took it in turns to drive the vehicles and to meet the walkers at places where the routes merged. Sometimes, they told me, they would drive back and forth several times over a stretch so that everyone had their chance of walking it.
    The children all kept scrap books and diaries, and recorded their impressions in words or pictures as they went along. Later, when I wrote up my notes, they let me see their books and I thought that between them they had put together an impressive body of knowledge. St James, or St Jacques as he was to them, came out of it very well in illustrations as amusing as only young children’s drawings can be before they become self-conscious about them.
    The parents