Travels with my Donkey

centrepiece water feature from the grounds of Versailles.
    Frómista was about as diverting as you'd expect from a town named after the word for cereal. Dominic Laffi had seen the locals engage a swarm of locusts with wooden clubs, and it's occasionally suggested as the birthplace of San Telmo, better known as St Elmo, patron saint of awful films my wife loves. As far as I could see that was it, so it came as a surprise to encounter a large group of pilgrims waiting about by the busy crossroads. Amongst them was Kathy, a quiet and erudite Australian I'd met at Club Med, who today had formed an unlikely walking alliance with Total Shithouse.
    'Waiting for some church to open, mate,' he said, before issuing a magnificent belch.
    Kathy's eyes twitched behind her little glasses. 'It's one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in this area,' she whispered, with a brave smile.
    That didn't sell it to me, I'm afraid, so instead Shinto and I headed off into an already hot morning. The canal was replaced by a rather fetching river, and we picnicked delightfully between the trees on its sun-mottled banks, the lazy, shallow water alive with flailing trout that because this was Spain nobody could be arsed to catch.
    As would later become apparent, almost straight after rejoining the camino I missed an important arrow. Instead of dog-legging left-right and up to rejoin the road, I continued along the river bank without sensibly pondering why the vegetation seemed a little wilder, the path a little vaguer and the arc of its hesitant progress a little too far to the north.
    The oilseed rape and poppies hemmed and encroached until I was having to part a way through them with one hand, ensuring with the other that they didn't whiplash back into Shinto's eyes. The path dipped down to the dried bed of some kind of flood-relief trench and reared immediately back up: a small roller-coaster which Shinto rather enjoyed. A little while later we swooped rashly down and up another. With the sun now at its punishing apogee I was delighted to find a water tap, so delighted that I gleefully emptied out my unpalatably tepid supplies without checking whether it worked.
    It didn't, of course, but that setback was soon forgotten. Round the next meander I heaved back a great bush of oilseed and there was another culvert affair, this time bridged with a door-sized slab of concrete. 'No fun this time, Shints,' I said, and walked across. The rearward anchors dug in; my head snapped back. I looked round and he'd stopped with his front hoofs an inch from the concrete.
    It was the first time he'd been seriously put out by a solid bridge, and here was one of especial poxiness. In fact, I thought, a perfect trial for Jean and Pilou's no-stress long-rope waiting game. Out came the stinking night cord, and with it tied to his head collar I paid out the full length and sat down in the weeds opposite. For ten minutes we contemplated each other mildly, like two commuters on opposite platforms. Then he twitched a fly off his rump, briefly assessed the proximate vegetation and stuck his grey head into a thick tuft of something.
    As I watched those jaws slowly working through the undergrowth I felt my own tighten. Then, working quickly, I tied the short cord to the end of the long one, dropped to my stomach and slithered backwards until I was out of sight, paying out rope throughout the retreat. It didn't take long. After a minute a plaintive, bereft honk filled the hot, still air, followed by four more and that distasteful granddad climax. I hunched lower, quietly smiting away an ant the size of three olives, and was soon rewarded with an unmistakable thunk, the sound of hoof on concrete. Extrapolating from previous experience that where one foot trod the others always followed I jumped up from my hiding place in exultation. A poor tactical decision, which as I watched had Shinto reversing back off the bridge and away.
    Neurologists speak in awe of the human brain's ability to process information at tremendous speed in a crisis, but as someone once told me before I begged them tearfully to leave me be, a fast processor is nothing without a bug-proof operating system. The logical options here were to clear a bridgeless path down through the culvert by pulling up a few small bushes; to tie Shinto up and search for an acceptable detour; or to calm him down, let him graze a little, then try Jean's method once more. My brain riffled through the consequences,