Travels with my Donkey

fence at the first water-filled swimming pool I had so far encountered. Two fat men were lazily disturbing its shallow end, and I was about to mumble some envious incivility when Simon said, 'I saw them pass us earlier. They're pilgrims.' And with that in mind we appraised the chalets bordering the pool, and having noted their appropriately commercial aspect shortly found ourselves at the reception desk, saddlebags round feet, donkey in car park, twitching in anticipation of the delicious baptism that awaited.
    Our welcome was disappointingly equivocal. The receptionist's bright countenance clouded as she plucked the last key from the rack, before beckoning us unenthusiastically across the rearward lawns to the door it opened. A handsomely appointed living area appeared, low-slung furniture arranged artfully on the cool terracotta tiles, but before we could even think about soiling it all she was coughing us apologetically towards the room's dim fundament. Another door; a double bed. I looked at Simon and we exchanged shrugs: a bit of inadvertent nocturnal footsie was a small price to pay for the aquatic facilities on offer.
    ' Hermanos?' she enquired, expectantly.
    I looked at him again. Did that mean what I think it meant? Simon's mild alarm told me it did. 'No!' I protested stoutly. 'No, just, you know...' And all I could think to do was place a fraternal arm around Simon's shoulder and pull him heartily towards me.
    Well, that was silly. After she'd left us the key with a look of perfect blankness, I got the dictionary out: Hermano, a [er'mano, a] nm,'f brother/sister. He'd show me how, and I'd catch the big one.
    Two beers and an immersion later we didn't care. Our medieval forebears prepared for arrival in Santiago with a ritual cleansing at the springs of Lavacolla, 8 clicks up the road, and we were just a little early. And a little more chaste, despite what they might be muttering about us in the bar: Lavacolla meant 'wash bollocks' in the Romance argot of the day. Christians routinely ridiculed Muslims and Jews for their hygienic fastidiousness, and this rare act of personal propriety was only warranted to sluice away the ripe and heady love-smells still clinging from those encounters in the woods after Portomarín.
    Replete with a shared bottle of red and a great bucket of stew, I felt as good as I had for some time. Shinto was happily installed in a dark corner of the garden, the last flakings of chaff at his feet, and through the trees above him, veined by branches, a heavy full moon, the moon I had seen wax and wane and wax again in that big Spanish sky. 'This is just too, too perfect,' sighed Simon, placing his hand on mine for the benefit of the waitress arriving with our brandies.
     
    Every one of our fellow guests had been a Spanish pilgrim, but the happy glow of confraternity we felt seeing their rucksacks lined up by our breakfast table was upgraded to fierce, rod-backed righteousness when Simon noted (a) that their owners had all already left, and (b) that each rucksack bore an adhesive label specifying a hotel address in Santiago. A pair of taxis arrived to collect the luggage as we walked out to meet Shinto. If you were being charitable you could have claimed that this was no different from the nobles who paid an underling to walk to Santiago and received their indulgence by proxy. If you weren't you could have switched all the labels round. But I didn't do that, because as Simon so rightly pointed out with a significant glance at Shinto, at least they had carried some of their own stuff some of the way.
    Not for the first time, my donkey had wound the night rope round and round a tree, thereby reeling in his nocturnal grazing diameter from amphitheatre to paddling pool. Immobility had also obliged Shinto to cast a fearful symmetry over his camino by despoiling the children's play area, and we were dispersing the grim evidence from the sandpit with boot and stick when an aged woman squeaked up pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with freshly cut grass. 'Por burro,' she croaked jovially, upending it effortlessly before his eagerly probing snout. Another act of kindness to reward with garbled Spanglish and gestures of gratitude, rendered more inadequate even than usual when we saw her stoop into a barn over the road: these weren't just lawn clippings, but half a winter week for some poor cow.
    With Shinto the fat filling in a Moore sandwich we were soon back in the VapoRub forests, wondering at the