Travels with my Donkey

pile of mown grass at a little park out the back end of Nájera, when Petronella walked past. She'd been turned away at the refugio, and I was glad to welcome her into our convoy. Shinto's post-lunch trough had become an ordeal of cake-stamping frustration, and the guidebooks were of one accord: it was tough ahead. Saddling Shinto up that morning I'd allowed myself to think that for the first time I was running a pretty tight ship. But we all know what happens to tight ships. That's right — they're so tight that they suddenly crack and get all smashed in and sink and everyone drowns.
    I was up front; Petronella got the tail end. After a short, sharp climb we found ourselves at the far end of a broad meseta, flat and fly-blown, the camino bisecting vineyards the size of Suffolk. At first it appeared no worse than dull, but there was no shade and after an hour the battering sun seemed to soften bones.
    Sweat burnt my eyes. I blinked it out and squinted around in a vain quest for something that wasn't the blue sky or the combed red earth or those rows of big-leaved shrublets that filled the gap between the two. Everyone else would be stretched out on a cool, dark bunk, but here I was once again, out in the igneous afternoon with the crickets and lizards. And if this was mid-May, what broiled lunacy went on here in mid-August? It was too hot to talk, and soon to think.
    A yank on the rope snapped back my limp and useless head and left it wobbling about atop a rubbery spine. By now I could gauge the strength of a pull-back and assess with reasonable accuracy its cause. The hierarchy, in descending order of induced whiplash potency, was as follows: the presence, on or alongside the path or road, of rival donkey dung; of wild alfalfa; of a funny shadow; of general equine dung; of hairy barley; of all other dung. When my skull had stopped moving I turned back: there was nothing. Shinto just stood in the middle of the path, gazing at or through my midriff. Petronella's crimson countenance registered as much bemusement as it could.
    I hauled him back to life but five yards on it happened again. And again. I felt a new sensation in my right palm and when I held it up to my leaking face, sweat dripped agonisingly into three great splits in the flesh. I already had rope burns on six fingers, and my left fist was bound and taped like a boxer's. The perpetual turning back and heaving forward had neurones in both shoulders dispatching urgent messages to the brain,-the brain nodded quickly and told the eyes to watch out for a flaming breaker's ball. And in the short time since the rain had stopped I'd been dramatically flash burned on every exposed area of south-facing skin: forearm, ear, cheek, half a nose. West, west, always west. The only way to guarantee a non-comic, all-over tan was to turn round at Santiago and walk all the way back.
    Our pace dropped further: in the next hour we covered less than 2 kilometres. To maintain the illusion of progress I reduced the length of my stride to that of an infant penguin's, and soon my entire body ached, as if all that pent-up motion was curdling in the muscles. Hare and tortoise teamed in a three-legged race. It was a little like walking your great-grand-mother to church; exactly so if you were in Chad, and the church was 500 miles away, and you'd just nicknamed her Fucko.
    What was going wrong? I looked round again and saw Shinto contort those hitherto inscrutable features into an alarming gurn, wobbling forth a jowly lip before the neck slumped downwards and he began scraping his mouth horribly through the red gravel. Was he hungry? The extra weight of the cebada sack certainly can't have helped — I untied it, poured some out into the bowl and wedged the remainder into my day pack. Without enthusiasm he lowered his head and snuffled down a few mouthfuls. Then he eased upright and began pawing feebly at the earth like an infirm bullock going through the motions.
    'I think he would like to roll,' rasped Petronella, who'd just inspected my crevassed palm and noted a lifeline cut short by the longest weeping gash. Hanno had urged me never to deny Shinto a roll in the dust, and because I'd apparently passed this information on to Petronella in some previous life last week, I stumbled over to him and unloaded everything.
    He watched me detach all the panniers and carrier bags and bowls and pile them messily up either side of him. He watched me drag them to the edge of the path. Then, for