Travels with my Donkey

origins of a slightly cloying overtone to the usual smell and finding out when Simon read from the guidebook. No matter how accustomed I might be by now to my surroundings, you couldn't say I ever felt completely at home: 'an unfortunate local custom' where I come from usually means solvent abuse or Morris dancing, but the reference here was to animal carcasses hurled into the woods.
    The trees let us out, and there — sweet Jim almighty — there was a DHL cargo jet, ripping upwards into the blue heavens right before us. 'Santiago airport,' announced Simon automatically when the world came back into focus. It happened again as we walked under the red-and-white landing-light gantry by the end of the perimeter fence, and even as that great, kerosene-streaked belly blotted out the sun above us like the opening credits of a sixties thriller, Shinto barely checked his languid stride.
    He was a donk of the world now, I thought with pride, a member of that long-eared elite who knew what went down not just on the other side of the fence, but on the other side of the border and a hundred leagues beyond. This plucky steed had experienced more in six weeks than had his forebears in six generations.
    Simon needed to confirm his return flight, and eschewing a wait back at the perimeter fence, I plumped for the more entertaining option of accompanying him up to the terminal building. Walking to an airport, as I've discovered whilst mixing it with taxi and minibus in many an underpass, is rarely a straightforward procedure; throw in the donk factor and you've got yourself a tragicomic 'And finally...' news story waiting to happen. Such at least was the theory, but aside from a little excitement at the barrier to the short-term car park and a couple of giggling stewardesses we made it without confronting mishap or bewildered outrage. The city was still 12 clicks off and out of sight, but we were clearly now within the civic radius of seen-it-all pilgrim fatigue. Still, it floated my boat (all aboard the HMS Duncechortle): the burro- to-go snap Simon took of Shints tied up between Fiestas in the Hertz lot remains a cherished favourite.
    Back across the dual carriageway we rejoined the parched camino, a meandering conveyor belt through the final examples of what had seemed an endless production line: the last hot and shuttered hamlet, the last chain-straining barker cowed to silence, the last sundried scattering of nasally seductive horse crap. We weren't sure where Lavacolla was, but Simon found a likely spring and filled our hot hats in it; Shinto sucked up a bowl and a half and I sluiced the remainder over his neck. As we were being watched by an elderly local this wasn't the moment for a bollock-wash, but I had at least found time to hose down my ass.
    Past two TV stations and a big campsite, the odd house with Gaelic fifes and drums filtering out from behind windows curtained with banners decrying the Prestige oil disaster: 'Nunca Mais' — Never Again. A large German saloon cruised past, and the ageing hoodlum at the wheel buzzed down his window, showing a hand with rings under every knuckle and emitting a rasp that I could only hope was one of gruff congratulation. Then up a broiled eminence so considerable that I was left without the wherewithal to take in the significance of the single digit on the marker post at its brow.
    The road flattened, then gently rose again. We could be in Santiago in three hours, be there tonight. But that wouldn't happen. That would be like opening my presents on Christmas Eve. A titanic 3,000-bed hillside refugio lay just outside the city limits, and to observe the proper rituals you stayed there, gathered your wits, and set off in the morning unsullied by heat and fatigue, in an attitude of appropriate reflection. Pursued by TV crews, Shirley MacLaine ran the last 15 clicks in darkness, an unhappy, unseemly conclusion that no pilgrim deserved.
    There's one just outside Jerusalem, and seven girdling Rome. Every pilgrimage has its nearly-there-now Mount of Joy, the hill from whose summit the final destination is at last revealed, and Santiago's is Monte de Gozo. By tradition, pilgrims race each other to the top, with the first to lay eyes on the twin Compostela towers granted the honorary title of king. 'Le roi' to the French pilgrim majority, the origin of the name Leroy. If you were on horseback you walked from Monte de Gozo; if you weren't you took off your ravaged shoes and did the last