Travels with my Donkey

not why they hoot. Yes, I'd never ridden a donkey on a beach or petted one at a city farm; never even pinned a cardboard tail to one's throat after the jelly and ice cream. There were obvious counterbalances to that momentous unburdening of the rucksack, yet any logistical disadvantages could, with a little imagination, be repackaged as spiritual bolsters. For a lifelong Londoner with mild farmyard phobia, assuming care of a proper, large animal instantly upgraded my camino from big walk to revelatory voyage of self-examination.
    So a donkey would be my hairy-coated hair shirt, making the journey a truer test of the will, a trial. The contemporary pilgrim, I'd read, departed with a burden of doubt or distress — in charge of a jackass, I'd saddled myself with a ready-made bundle of both. Maybe even a little bottle of Christian spirit, in an All Creatures Great and Small kind of way. And because I'd already proved myself unable to resist pondering the opportunities for labour-saving pilgrimage dishonesty — bicycles, hitch-hiking, public transport — here was a guarantor of moral correctitude. How could I cheat with a donkey? A question I hoped not to be asking Birna on my first night home.
    'You don't want to over-prepare,' someone had said at the Confraternity meeting. 'Without surprises it's not a journey of discovery.' Waylaid by donkeys, in thought if not in deed, this was a homily I embraced so tightly that after a month you could read it backwards on my chest. I downloaded a Spanish language course off the Net, but as is often the way with such material found it hacked by some corrupted absurdist. I tried, really I did, to concentrate on 'I am not from Venezuela' and 'Here is the ferry terminal', but it was never going to be easy when 'Eat shit and die' and 'Get the fuck out of here' were on offer. Then I bought a torch, and some safety pins, and — may the Lord have mercy on my soles — a pair of open-toed sandals. I knew there'd be something I wouldn't be able to find when the time came to pack. Why did it have to be the safety pins?
    We were into April, I was nowhere near finding myself a donkey, and the Internet, for once, had failed to unearth a willing ass. But it did add grist to the mill, with a surprisingly large number of contemporary paeans to the donkey as longdistance porter. All were in French, however, and because I don't even know what fetlock or withers mean in English, I was obliged to make use of an online translation service. Being complimentary, this was also magnificently wayward, referring to God as 'Our Mister' and to sundry European towns as 'Population of Fields', 'Queen Bridge' and 'Pony'. Thus I read of the Breton man who had taken his donkey across France 'not as physical exploit, or tourism, but order gait witty'. There was the retired optician whose donkey had been led through Lyons' dark streets by 'girls of small virtue' and — oooh — the Belgian couple who had walked with a pair of donkeys and two young daughters all the way from their home to Santiago. I was also, in more general terms, appraised of the 'Five Advantages of the Luggage Donkey'.
    First of these was, of course, that 'one not carry more'. Here, having explained why 56 kilos is not large issue for donkeys, the author rails against the misplaced nostalgic sentimentality that, to atone for cruelties past, now aims 'to treat our modern donkeys as living-room toutous'. Advantages two and three emphasised that a donkey does not cost nothing and provides an amicable and confident link with the native populations. The donkey's mischievous nature as a joker who will imagine sometimes the worst stupidities to go interesting was explored in 'Comedy — The Fourth Advantage'. And finally, with my mouse arrow hovering shakily over the 'clear screen' button, I read of the donkey as a small companion, very discreet, very complicit, who will know to share you a beautiful love history.
     
    'You can give the donkey a happy ending, but the miserable beginning remains for ever.' Scrolled beneath Eeyore in its promotional material, it's this ethos that has made the Donkey Sanctuary one of Britain's most successful charities. Largely funded by bequests from women old enough to remember doeeyed long-ears being beaten in field as on beach, it now raises £13 million a year. Its founder, Elisabeth Svendsen, has done her job so well that 3,500 living-room toutous — three quarters of the entire UK donkey population — now browse