Exhibit pages
Chapter 5. Page 2.:
with hot chocolate which brought a smile to my hungry pilgrim face. The
owner, feeling our contentment, presented his guestbook to sign which
we did willingly, I, as "pilgrim green", alluding to my birthplace,
Plymouth and messages and memories of other times.
This bridge, along with the bridge crossed at Puente de la Reina, is
perhaps the most emblematic of the Camino. Here, as we cross, we are
acknowledging the new flame recently ignited in our hearts, leaving
behind the darkness of the old self and embracing the light of the new.
This particular bridge is famous for an event that occurred in the Jubilee
year of 1434 (i.e. when July 25th falls on a Sunday), when during a fortnight
either side of the 25th a curious jousting tournament took place
on the bridge itself. The story goes that Don Suero de Quiñones, a
knight, asked for and was strangely granted permission from King John
the Second of Castile to challenge and oblige any knight passing on the
pilgrim route to participate in a joust. Those who refused (few I suppose
in those days of honour and bravado) were branded cowards. The
jousting took place amongst much merrymaking and fortunately only
one knight was to lose his life.
The tournament although inconveniencing the pilgrims’ passage
found them to be not entirely unwilling spectators. The motive for such
a brutal tournament was the love of Don Suero for a lady, who for the
sake of honour, could not be named and for who, every Thursday, he
wore a heavy metal brace around his neck. In order to liberate himself
from this self-imposed torture which was meant to be a sign of his love,
he had to create and participate in the tournament and then with conscious
clean, could proceed on to Santiago and pay homage to the
Apostle. A curious parallel to our journey is the fact that this bridge represents
the crossing point between heart and throat and so is when we
express our love as did Don Suero by curiously wearing the brace
around his throat - thus willingly blocking the throat chakra, hindering
communication and maintaining silence until the tournament brought
liberation. It can be seen then as a kind of penance, before his true
desires could be expounded.
Luckily, I faced no such challenges to my honour as I crossed the
bridge on this sunny Monday morning, the 14th of July, which would
have been more or less the start of the event 579 years before! A few
light hills took me the 13km to Astorga which first appears high on the
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