Spanish Steps: One Man and His Ass on the Pilgrim Way to Santiago

Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail. With a donkey.

Being larger than a cat, the donkey falls into that category of animal that Tim Moore is at least slightly scared of. Yet, intrigued by epic accounts of a pilgrimage undertaken by one in three medieval Europeans, and strangely committed to historical authenticity, he finds himself leading a Pyrenean ass named Shinto into Spain, headed for Santiago de Compostela.

Nuzzling businessmen at a city-centre zebra crossing, or shuffling after some policewomen across a broiled and lonely plain, the pair bring a smile to every local face. Over 500 miles of extreme weather, agonizing bestial sloth and triple-bunk dormitories, it becomes memorably apparent that for the multinational band of eccentrics who keep the Santiagan flame alive, the pilgrimage has evolved from a purely devotional undertaking into a mobile therapist’s couch.

Ludicrous, heart-warming and improbably inspirational, Spanish Steps is the story of what happens when a rather silly man tries to walk all the way across a very large country, with a very large animal who doesn’t really want to.

Tim Moore is the author of French Revolutions and Do Not Pass Go.