Travels with my Donkey

would be a liar if I said I wasn't a little worried myself. In fact, I would be a liar if I said I wasn't very close to tears. The cow ahead turned to face us head on and rasped out a noise that explored the overlap between moo and roar, a noise whose galvanising effect was instantly translated into the more urgent hammering of rearward hoofs. With the beef sandwich about to spread itself in pilgrim chutney, Shinto abruptly charged forwards into a gap that wasn't there. But somehow he made one, and with my left-hand daypack strap swishing against a horn tip and the right snagging a tangle of hedgerow, somehow I followed him through. I re-established contact with Shinto half a breathless click up the road, and once I had it was clear that from now on I'd be back up the front.
    The first of the day's two auspicious phone calls was taken in our lunch-time field, as I crouched camera-faced by Shinto's raised tail, poised to capture the anus-domed breaking of wind that would complete my excretory trilogy. It was from my brother Simon, at a loose end and a low ebb after a brutal cull at his place of employment, stating that he fancied popping out for a bit of a walk; quite soon, perhaps; in fact why not tomorrow. That was good news, and the second brought more of the same, received just after a rather stilted wave at the straight-faced farmer who had clearly been contemplating my photographic performance over the gate for some time.
    'Tim? It is Hanno.'
    He was answering a text message I'd sent him the night before, desperate for guidance with my impending donkey surplus. But there was a lot more to say; too much, indeed, particularly at £900 a syllable. Hanno was reasonably dumbfounded to hear that my partnership with Shinto had somehow survived nearly six weeks of cack-handed, cack-hoofed fear and ineptitude, and having heard coughed out a query.
    'Uh, alors, you have ideas how to do with Shinto in Santiago?'
    This was the very question I had texted him, but having fielded it myself at least five times a day I allowed the default response to trip thoughtlessly off my tongue. 'I'm going to beat him to death with a chair on the cathedral steps.'
    'Comment?'
    'No, well, there was some Dutch girl with a fat dog, but she had a blue light in her heart.'
    'Ah... Tim?'
    'I've really no idea, Hanno. Sorry. I was hoping you might have some suggestions.' I remembered him mentioning a livestock market in Santiago, but now a familiar image crystallised in my head, of Shinto gambolling in slow motion through a Pyrenean pasture towards a whinnying throng of eager donkeys. Hanno butted in before I got to the bit where they shoved him up against the caravan.
    'It has been sad for my family without Shinto,' he began, causing me to recall those farewell tears, 'and for the other donkays also.' I heard him suck in and exhale. 'Tim.' A new and forthright tone. 'I ask to take Shinto back.'
    Never have six words that didn't include 'explicit', 'chilli' or 'free' made me so happy. So happy, indeed, that after a rather one-sided bout of donk-trading I found I had agreed to compensate Hanno fully for the 2,300-kilometre, five-day round trip required. Instead of trading Shinto in for a profit, I'd just committed myself to the lavish funding of his joyous return from Santiago. And I had done so because he had earned a reward, and not one that saw him ending his days in seedy-toed solitude, lashed to the shafts of a Galician scrap merchant's wagon with a nosebag full of slops and sawdust. I had done so because I wanted to see him happy. Because... because, heck, I loved that great big fool.
    I was gaining a brother, and losing a donkey. It was big news, which I vainly endeavoured to process as the camino plunged down to the banks of a mighty, dammed river. The town at the distant end of an interminable bridge handled by Shinto with brittle composure was Portomarín, built in 1962 to replace its ancient forebear, lost beneath the waters when the valley was flooded for hydroelectric purposes. That four-square Romanesque fortress of a church was moved up the gorge to the site of the new town block by shed-sized block; in 1998, when the reservoir was briefly drained, the church peeked down at the slathered ruins of its former home, Roman bridge, water mills and all.
    For a town forty years old Portomarín had not aged well, cement barns shoulder to shoulder with homes and knackered warehouses up the main street. The whitewash was flaking and lichened,