Travels with my Donkey

away with — my droving licence — declared proficiency in every aspect of Basic Donkey Care, even stable management, no one in the room was under any illusions. They'd watched me running away from George and being snouted about the courtyard by Sam. They knew that I was scared of donkeys, and they knew the donkeys knew it too. Even in French, as I discovered three weeks later.
     

Three

     
    C omfortably more convenient than pilgrimage rivals Rome and Jerusalem, Santiago was always the British holy traveller's preferred destination. Shakespeare included references to 'cockle hats and staffs' in Hamlet and Sir Walter Raleigh even composed a rhyming eulogy to the pilgrimage. 'Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon... My gown of glory, hope's true gage, And thus I'll take my pilgrimage,' he wrote, and though he actually never did, skeletons clad in decayed pilgrim cloaks and clutching scallop shells to their ribs have been uncovered in church crypts throughout the land.
    The eleventh-century British vanguard came on pray-and-slay crusades to take on the Moors; later, we helped pioneer pilgro-tourism and so, say I, inaugurated a long tradition of holidaying in Spain (and as souvenirs go, it's tough to top remission of accumulated sins). We stayed loyal to Santiago even as the ever shifting allegiances of medieval Europe threw up new hazards: British pilgrim ships were regularly held to ransom in Spanish ports, and in 1375 six pilgrims from Yorkshire were executed as traitors on their return from Santiago, unaware that they had passed through Castille during a period of alliance with the hated French.
    No one is certain how many Brits travelled overland, but good records exist of those who took the pilgrim ferries direct to Spain — William Wey, the most notable British pilgrim chronicler, sailed from Plymouth to La Coruña ('La Groyne' in his unfortunate translation) in an impressive four days. Even in the fifteenth century, with the pilgrimage's popularity well past its peak, over 3,000 pilgrims were voyaging from Britain every year.
    But even when Anglo-French relations sank to their murderous worst, there were always those for whom the express sea route was a little lightweight, a little inauthentic. To walk, it was said, was to pray with one's feet. And for those, as I discovered between the forbidding covers of Jacobean Pilgrims from England to St James from the Early Twelfth to the Late Fifteenth Century, a regularly favoured stopover was at any of the friendly monasteries of southern France, where many — oh, happy, happy words — 'were given or lent an ass for the journey'.
     
    I'd found Hanno after a desperate request to Jan and Nick Flanagan, at whose cycling-based lodging house Pyrenean Pursuits I had been a guest some years before. I needed a donkey, I needed him in or near Spain, and with the summer pilgrim rush I'd been urged to avoid now encroaching, I needed him fast. Hanno, I should perhaps point out, was not a donkey. He was very much a man, indeed a vital, bearded Hagrid of a man who hurled my belongings into the dusted rear of his much-travelled Landcruiser with a single swing of a long arm. The Continental donkey enthusiast was evidently a breed apart from his pigtailed Sidmouth counterpart.
    Apprehensive as to how I might recognise my donk vendor when he arrived to meet me at a bedrizzled Carcassonne airport, Hanno had described himself as having 'much disorder in the hair'. As long as this hadn't seeped into the head below I didn't mind. For two weeks I'd been in constant, if indirect, contact with Mañuel Bazquez, a man tracked down by a Spanish-resident friend of mine, John Perring. The service Mañuel provided seemed ideal for my needs: he hired donkeys to Spanish pilgrims, providing all the medical kit and saddlebags and so on, and after a month drove all the way to Santiago to pick them up in a horse trailer. A one-way rental, and for only 600 euros all in.
    There were a couple of drawbacks. One was that I'd never manage 774 kilometres in a month. Another was that Mañuel didn't have any donkeys.
    I'm not sure why it took Mañuel so long — a dozen emails and as many phone calls — to divulge this important fact to John, but his failure to do so didn't augur well for future dealings with the tradesmen of Spain. On day one Mañuel had fourteen donkeys, but by day eight a party of pilgrims had led half of those away. Then on day twelve, without explanation,