Travels with my Donkey

couldn't tie a knot and despite that malnourished epiphany in Los Arcos didn't yet believe in Our Mister. Shinto now had a scabbed sore where the rear strap had chafed into his rump, and my feet hurt when I didn't have boots on. My electric razor, a burdensome luxury denied to the donkless, was now operating on a voltage so diminished that the present shaving experience was as comfortable and effective as one carried out with a rusty wire brush. And no matter how often I told myself what a special experience it was to see a country and a story unfold like this, step by thoughtful step, there was still a pang of melancholy whenever we trudged past one of those blue signs. 'A1 MADRID', it might say, or 'A68 BARCELONA', and for a moment I would see myself reeling in the clicks towards an exciting and distant metropolis, left elbow out the window, right foot to the floor. One of these moments had lasted for two hours.
    A night untroubled by anxiety-related donkey ponderings was rare, and that night wasn't one of them. Passing back via Shinto on my way home – home! — from dinner I'd found three boys, none older than ten, throwing bottles at the wall just by his head. To Shinto's credit, it hadn't put him off his weeds. I clapped my hands and barked out a park keeper's 'Oi!', then stooped to redouble the knot at both ends. They watched me steadily, the oldest fingering the lip of a Heineken empty, and I stared back with a look that gamely attempted to merge the threat of retributive violence with pious entreaty: devout yet stroppy, like St Jim showing both his faces at once. And then, because it was already gone 10.00, I'd had to leave them there.
    So for the second time in less than twelve hours I was gratefully astonished to see my donkey present and alive, a sensation that waned slightly when I plonked the saddle over his back and he bit me on the shoulder. 'Attention!' cackled a nearby voice. It was the Frenchman. He said that as a smoking insomniac he'd been able to keep tabs on Shinto throughout the night, and I held out my hands in helpless gratitude: for every taxi that sped past with a thin-lipped cheat crouched down in its foot wells, there were at least a dozen saintly Samaritans. The next time I saw the smoking Frenchman, weeks later, he was walking towards me — one of only three pilgrims I encountered doing the return trip.
    The day's recommended stage was a 23-clicker, conspicuous for the ascent of the Montes de Oca, Goose Mountains. At nearly 4,000 feet its highest point was the most vertically conspicuous obstacle I'd encountered yet, higher than the road over the Pyrenees; an eminence so considerable that it steered the rivers on its west flank towards the Atlantic and those on its east to the Med. People got lost up there: Dominic Laffi in 1670, the fêted pilgrim-diarist Walter Starkie in 1950, and others far more recently. The bandits that once preyed on pilgrims had gone; but the wolves, I'd read, had not. For all these reasons it had seemed prudent to stop short of the final, lonely assault on the summit, overnighting at Villafranca Montes de Oca, 12 kilometres from Belorado. One of the strictest refugio diktats was the rule restricting pilgrims to a single night's stay, but if I couldn't give Shinto a whole day off, at least I could give him a free afternoon.
    I set off with Maria, a jolly little Brazilian who via the mutual exchange of undistinguished gesticulations had indicated that 12 kilometres was more than enough for her. In fact she didn't even make that. She'd slept in the bunk next to mine and in the morning I'd noticed eight of her toes thickly swaddled in blood-blotted bandages. Maria hobbled through Belorado, but an hour into the still, sweet countryside beyond pulled up, unable to continue even in sandals. Shinto and I waited a while but she summoned up a smile and waved us on. 'Is OK, is OK, is OK.' I never saw her again.
    The odd facial hot spot in that now rather alarming farmer's tan, a little rope-burn scar tissue — my only genuinely worrisome physical corruption was a sharp knee twinge, the sort of impacted, internal bruise that suggested recent participation in some marble-floored hopscotch marathon. How had I got off so lightly? Because the Lord looks after his own. And because my feet weren't pinned to the earth by a backpack the size of São Paulo.
    A sombrely ruminative half-hour ensued, leading us into a hamlet with an elderly church: looking at the map now I can't