Travels with my Donkey

there on his back, hands on the saddle horns, an incredulous beam on the small bit of face visible beneath her sun-hat; Kristjan, being nine, and a boy, was somewhere behind us dribbling Fanta on an ant's nest. I was happy; we were all happy.
    Within a click it was apparent that Shinto appreciated the children's presence as much as I did: Valdis weighed rather more than the panniers ever had, but when I briefly removed her he slowed to a sulky shuffle and up she went again. For the first time in days, in fact weeks, his ears stood proudly aloft to reflect eager contentment rather than panic. There was no getting away from the adjectives flat and hot, but nobody seemed to notice. Birna joined us for the last hour, and breezed up to our lonely roadside hotel murmuring that if it was this easy we could try doing 30 kilometres the next day.
    The Urbanización Santiago was as beguilingly atmospheric as one might have anticipated, a spanking new but creepily deserted structure with an adjoining restaurant, dropped in the litter-strewn no man's land — sorry, landscaped overnight donkey park — between the N120 and another deserted motorway. The beds in our pitch-roofed attic all incorporated thick rubber undersheets — I could have depilated a bathed and excitable donkey in there and the mattress at least would have been none the wiser — and were situated tight up against the ceiling's lowest point, guaranteeing nocturnal pain and alarm for any father stupid enough to put his pillow at the wrong end.
    Our sole fellow guests were a business traveller I'd seen arranging fabric samples in the boot of his Opel, and a rather furtive couple in the room below who occupied the night with glumly metronomic acts of love. But no other pilgrims. In fact no pilgrims at all, because as far as most of the service-industry personnel we encountered hereon were concerned, I was now just part of a complicated, indulgent and perhaps rather culturally patronising family holiday. As a pilgrim I'd led an almost Amish existence, but here I was, turning up at big hotels with a Nokia pressed to my head and a support vehicle parked round the back. I'd never paid more than €1.50 for a beer,- that night they charged me €3.00.
    It was swings and roundabouts, though, and the next morning those surcharging waiters were joined in that metaphorical playground by twinkly-eyed old ladies. I'd already been severally impressed with the nostalgic burromania exhibited by Spain's elderly females, but with Valdis in the saddle and Lilja threading a daisy chain through Shinto's tail the overall package proved almost fatally winsome for women of a certain age. As our convoy idled through the first road-dusted strip town of another hot day, its black-clad, waddling citizenry accrued about us, hands clasped to beam-wrinkled cheeks or gladdened hearts.
    If Shinto awakened memories of their bucolic, carefree youth, then two young children were a poignant reminder of a time when towns like this resounded not with the dismal roar of heavy traffic but the shrieks and yelps of gambolling playmates. Nationally the Spanish birth rate is amongst Europe's lowest, and in these no-hope, hard-luck nothingsvilles, kids were almost as rare as donkeys. Valdis came out the other side of Villadangos with a Chupa Chup and a balloon; Lilja with an apple, heavily ruffled hair and a furious blush.
    An hour along the road we were met by the taxi carrying Birna and Kristjan, and after a brochure-worthy under-tree picnic beside a chuckling irrigation stream, set off en famille into an afternoon that was an effective bullet-point summary of my recent experiences. A big horizon bisected by a tapering orange path, a heartless sun, a huge stork homing lazily in on a church tower like a bleached pterodactyl. The sole discrepancy was Shinto's keen zest for the road and faultless behaviour; I was almost relieved when I scooped Valdis off his back as we crossed a small ditch, and looked back a second later to see him galloping tangentially away through the ploughed field we'd just skirted. 'There was a man on a bike with a plastic bag,' shrugged Lilja.
    Twelve clicks was barely half a day for Shints, but in this heat I could only admire my children's resilience as we set foot on the Puente del Paso Honroso, at the other end of which lay our hotel. Eight hundred years old, with twenty arches and a total length of over 200 metres, the bridge is astonishing in most ways, not least because