Travels with my Donkey

tarmac, she engaged first and soon we were travelling at a velocity that was literally superhuman, and for the first time in my life actually felt like it. If speed was indeed a drug then I'd been cold turkey for five weeks, surely the longest since my father had driven his wife and last-born child away from the maternity hospital in a Ford Zephyr. I gathered from Maria's commentary that we were passing through a valley of big beauty and histories, but all I cared about was sensing it swish by. I felt my scalp shrink as the kilometre posts thwicked past, my brain unwilling to accept what my eyes were telling it, that what had been taking twenty weary minutes or more was now, as we hit mean Spanish cruising speed, a matter of thirty carefree seconds. It was too fast, but then it wasn't fast enough, and as we pulled up outside a large institution of ecclesiastical aspect I was rocking forward and back in my seat, a child coaxing the last vestiges of momentum from his go-kart.
    Maria did her best to enthuse me at Samos, pointing out the monks tending its garden, the scallop shells on its railings, its general ancient vastness. I tried, I really did: slowly pacing the perimeter with my hands linked behind my back in academic rumination, gamely nodding — the works. 'Is one of most old and most big in Spain,' she said, and I raised a dutiful eyebrow. Samos was off the route but a popular option with the sort of pilgrim who didn't mind an additional 9 clicks; why, look — there's Donald, hoisting a beer at us from that bar. Regrettably, though, the monastery's sombre façade arrestingly incorporated a petrol station: one look at the pumps and I felt an itching desire to reprise my performance as an unsophisticated Victorian ruralite on his first train ride. 'Listen, this is all great, Maria,' I said as we walked past the forecourt, 'but I feel we ought to be heading back.' At immense and glorious speed.
    Mario was slumped in front of that huge telly when we got back, showered and happily knackered, another notch on his calving forearm. We shared more beers, and talked merry garbage to the accompaniment of flamenco and progressive rock, and posed for a self-timer shot I have before me now: the three of us huddled together, four tanned hands on neighbouring shoulders and a small pet in the spare two, fag smoke rising from a table full of bovine-themed crockery and empty bottles. The frame before depicts Shinto's dead-eyed head on my lap, taken for the reference of veterinarian or coroner, and as I rapped my donkey goodnight on the window and drooped towards that lovely guest bed, what had seemed the worst day of my pilgrimage was ending as one of its very best.
     
    * * *
     
    I was up with the lark, or rather the skull-shuddering bray, and leaving a fond note of thanks against a ceramic udder by the phone dragged my bags out into the chilled half-light. And there was Shinto, contemptuously staring out a plump brown dog as its owner slowly brushed his mane. 'It's quarter to seven,' I said, in a tone better suited to a slightly smaller hour. Letje looked up with a distant, Mona Lisa smile. 'Ramon found this address for me. I have met so many people who live in a completely different dimension.'
    As Mario had predicted, Shinto was a different animal after his lay-up. And just as well, as the camino's last great climb began just outside Triacastela, a sunless slog up through chestnuts and crippled hamlets that Sativa's darting, barking underfoot presence and Letje's gnomic pronouncements didn't make any easier. 'I feel a strong light in my heart,' she panted dramatically as the track tilted upwards, 'and the light is blue.' Then the chestnuts eased back and we were up on the brow, stout, fat-headed oaks straight from Hampshire theatrically sidelit by a low sun that cast long shadows across copper-misted pastures.
    The camino broadened into a fat swathe of fire-break, and as the Triacastela overnighters caught us we gradually found ourselves part of a pilgrim army, three or four abreast, marching to folk songs bellowed magnificently by a pair of hugely gay Italians. 'A true spirit sings in their sleep,' opined Letje, moving ever closer to a conversation composed entirely of slogans culled from Japanese sportswear.
    A scowl, a tut and a Shinto-directed 'Oh, mon brave' heralded the passing of that Frenchwoman, and then there was Ramon, balefully hungover. His presence procured a brief respite from the one-sided exchange of