I swapped my campervan for a donkey

England, 2018

The snow was falling fast and heavy on my windscreen and I could barely see where I was going. I had just picked up my first van- a 1985 Mercedes motorhome. I’d never driven a car in this weather let alone a heavy vehicle like this. But I felt determined. This was my first vehicle since I had set off to Asia 2 years ago. Now I was back in England and desperate for some wheels. And a home! I finally managed the 2 hour journey (in 6 hours) to get it back to my home town of Southampton and spent the next few months decorating it (mostly yellow) and making a home for myself.

I spent some time travelling to Glastonbury where I could enjoy a real sense of freedom and then decided to head off to Portugal. A journey which set me off on a whole new chapter in my life and to a country in which I am now finally putting some roots. By the time I left Portugal 5 months later I was determined to head back there with some money and a plan. However this took me a little longer than expected. I had one last travelling adventure to prepare myself………

The story begins at the beginning of that first trip to Portugal. I had a lot of time of my hands, parking up as some beautiful places in nature, and a lot of love to give. So I decided to foster a dog. I had fostered many cats and kittens when I lived in England and thought it time to try something new. I found Keana at a local dog shelter in the south of Portugal. The lady was happy for me to take care of her for a few months that I was here. 3 weeks into our time together I was back at the shelter ready to adopt her. “I was expecting you” said the lady, adoption papers practically to hand. This was the beginning of a new adventure for me, no longer travelling alone but now with the most loving companion and protector. We enjoyed so much freedom together, parking up at new wonderful places every week.

2019

Unfortunately over time Keana, who was always quite an anxious dog grew to be more and more uneasy of Jack, my old motorhome. He was loud and bumpy and after a long ride back to England she had had enough. She outright refused to travel anymore with me in Jack. Since this was our only home and form of transport I had a choice- Jack or Keana.

A few weeks later I sold Jack to a friend of mine and was on a ferry to Belgium. I had for a long time been thinking about slowing down my life and making it more simple. I was in luck! A friend of mine – Mila was about to embark on a walk from Belgium to Portugal with her Belgian shire horse, dog and a cart she’d made for herself. The plan was to join her on this long trip.

My first plan was to make a contraption for myself to pull my belongings. I found someone who said he’d build me a little pull- along cart.

I tried it out one weekend by walking in the forest to meet some friends. It was fun but exhausting!

New plan- we would join Mila alone.

Walhain, Belgium

We walked every day, through the country roads with the dogs and our things in the cart.

At night we would ask a village local if we could stay with our tents overnight in a field.

The people were always so happy to help and host us. I had never experienced such kindness and generosity. Most of them also offering for us to join them for dinner or breakfast. Along the way people would watch us walking through their little villages and bring food out for us.

We had so much food collected that we had to eventually say no! After a few weeks Mila’s beautiful horse got sick. She had to go back home with him. I was gutted. Portugal was so deeply in my heart that I could not bear to turn back. So I decided to catch a Bla Bla car (shared ride) and head to the south of France. I had a new idea….

The French Pyrénées-Atlantiques

I was in luck again! The lady who picked me up was headed all the way down south. She was a kinesiologist and worked with farmers. She asked me where she should drop me off, I replied “anywhere in the south on your way, that I can put my tent for the night with a little shop in walking distance. I want to find a couple of donkeys!” To my delight she told me she knew some donkey farmers. So I travelled with her for some days and she eventally took me to her donkey farm friends. I was a little in shock when I found out how much they cost (between EUR 1,500 – 4,000 each). The farmer asked me if I was sure I wanted 2 donkeys because they can be “a little difficult to manage” and usually recommends 1 donkey per 2 humans. At first she let me try one of the cheaper (less trained) ones. He wouldn’t even walk with me out of the farm. Then she gave me Robbie- a 12 year old compostel veteran.

Robbie, Keana and I stayed for a week at a local campsite that allowed horses and donkeys so I could practice with him a bit.

He was perfect! He did everything I asked and was such a soft kind gent. So I paid the farmer the EUR 2,800 (the same as I sold my van for and the last of my savings) and she gave me all the equipment and bags to go with him. She showed me how to balance the weight equally on his back, told me what he ate (grass, corn and a mixture of leaves and plants growing wild), and when to get his feet checked. I was set!

Day 1 got off to a great start, we walked about 5km to the next village in total peace, meeting not a single soul along the way. We stopped occasionally for food and water breaks at rivers and lakes along the way.

I was finally able to start reading again and was bathing in the total sense of freedom and prescence. As the day was drawing to an end we found a nice spot in a little forest clearing to set up base for the night. I cooked some rice and vegetables for myself and Keana and gave Robbie a treat of a few corn I’d ‘found’ along the way. I tied Robbie on a long rope to a tree so that he could graze on the long grass while I set up my tent. As I took my belongings out of my tent bag my sense of peace quickly dissipated as I realised I was missing my tent sticks. “Shit! Where could they be??!” I decided I would try not to worry, sleep in the hammock tonight and go back in the morning to try to find them.

That night was restless in my small hammock in a forest with all sorts of strange noises and my imagination running wild. The next morning after zero sleep I walked to the local village and asked a lady if I could leave Robbie in the local church grounds while I go back and find the sticks. Keana and I traced our steps but couldn’t find them anywhere. That night we set the tent up in the church garden and I used my backpacks to prop up the tent. It was a bit like sleeping in a coffin but I felt happy and safe and more comfortable than my hammock.

Church grounds- (and flat tent in background)

The next few weeks were spent walking the compostel a network of pilgram trails. I followed my guidebooks from village to village, finding beautiful forests or asking people along the way if I could stay on their land.

The only shops along the way were simple little village ones with little stock but with the fruit and veg and few tins of fish for Keana that I needed. There wasn’t much in the way of crisps (my staple nutritious snack) but occassionally they’d sell some dried fruit and nuts which I would ration myself with each evening with my novel and looked forward to every night! Robbie was amazing and went over every bridge, through every narrow pathway, down every steep hill or over whatever water or stones came our way.

We managed between 5-10km every day. We watched many a pilgram marching past us, stopping only to say hello to us because we were walking so slowly. One time I asked one of them to walk behind Robbie with her walking stick to see what would happen. Without any touch on him Robbie’s speed practically doubled! I was astounded! All this time he could have been walking at a normal rate and instead we’ve both been dawdling along! The farmer’s words came back to haunt me in that moment. She was right- this would have been much better with 2 people. But I was just 1, so we continued dawdling for 3 weeks. Actually I didn’t really mind, I was in no hurry. The landscapes were beautiful and I felt so connected to myself and my little animal family.

Robbie and Keana had a love-hate relationship. She was attacked one day by 2 farmer dogs and Robbie started stomping his feet and making a lot of noise to scare them off. But usually he was inpatient with her. She liked to walk ahead of us and then just stop abruptly. Robbie had no time for this and would kick her out of the way. She never learnt though. Each night Keana slept outside my tent and Robbie nearby.

I felt safe, protected and so full of love. If a bit lonely. This life was not easy setting up and down our camp every day, noone to talk to except myself and the animals. It grew tough.

One evening I arrived in the middle of a village and asked a local if I could sleep in his field. “I can do better than that!” he said and directed me to another field of his down the valley next to a river. It was the most beautiful spot and I decided to spend a few nights there, swimming and cleaning my things and taking a well-needed rest after 3 weeks on the road. After a few days I put out my little campfire, propped up my tent with bags as usual and retired for the night. I woke up at 5 am. Something felt different in my bed. It was wet. Everything was wet. It was raining and I had no cover on my tent due to the not having sticks. I looked outside, Keana was curled up in a ball shivering and Robbie’s long hair was also soaked through. I crammed our wet belongings into the bags and left the river. I couldn’t continue like this. It was autumn and the weather would only get worse. I headed to the next village (Arthez-de-Béarn) where I could see on my handbook that there was a gite (a hostel for walkers along the camino where the pilgrams could stay for dinner and a bed) which accepted donkeys.

I arrived there, soaked through and was met by the 60- something round-tummied baker with his long white apron and a couple of his friends of. I asked if I could stay. He looked me and the wet animals up and down and mumbled something to his friends in French. They replied something and he finally replied to me ‘hmmmm, ok’. I later found out that he had not wanted me there because of the state we were in but his friends had felt sorry for me and encouraged him to let us stay. He led me to a room separate from the main dormitories, out the back with a view of the garden where he said I could put Robbie.

I walked into the room and almost cried at the sight of the simple shower, kitchenette and double bed. I told him I wanted to order some tent sticks to his address and that I would be here until they arrived, hopefully a week because that was all I could afford. “Pas de problem” he replied and said that if I needed to stay longer I could camp in the garen for 5 euro a night. I spent the evening scrubbing myself clean, unpacking my bags into this spacious room and then slept soundly in the fresh sheets. Robbie was very happy outside in the garden with the fruit trees and the baker’s friend brought him some grains.

After a week the sticks still hadn’t arrived (actually they would never arrive). I told the baker that I needed to camp now but he grunted and said the place was quiet due to low season and to stay in the room. I told him I couldn’t afford it. He grunted again and walked off. After a week of him asking me if I wanted to join the other pilgrams for home made dinner in the dining hall and me politely refusing “I am happy just cooking for myself, merci”., he finally insisted that I join and even said he’d cook something special for me that was vegan. So I joined early and help him set up. People started arriving. I was a little out of social practice having only had Keana and Robbie to talk to (plus the baker’s grunts). But it grew to be a really nice evening with lots of different people from all over the world sharing their stories. At the end of the night the baker told me I could come every night and help him set up in exchange for dinner. I did this for a month before realising that the tent sticks were never going to arrive. As the month went on the place became more and more quiet but I would always share dinner with the baker and his daughter (his wife had recently died). We couldn’t understand much of each other due to his not being able to speak any English and my limited French. But it didn’t matter because he looked after me like I was part of the family. On my last evening with him I tried to pay him for my time there and he wouldn’t accept a single penny. The more I insisted the more offended he became. I left the next morning with Robbie and Keana in a horse truck, waving goodbye in tears of gratitude for my time spent there. We were headed back to Belgium to spend the winter with Mila and a mutual friend. But this is a story for another time.

Keana and I went back to visit the baker (Bernard) and his bakery on our way back to Portugal almost a year later in our new more modern van home that I converted with a friend. Bernard’s daughter had left for university and he was alone there. I cooked him some nice food and shared some stories with him before I went on my way again. He seemed happy to see me now in my upgraded vehicle and happy in life and with a more sustainable plan.

Jack (my old motorhome) is now in retirement in my friend’s cousin’s garden being used as a playhouse for her children.

Robbie is in Belgium with a lovely older couple and their other donkey. He is now retired from the compostel adventures but enjoys walks with his new family and giving rides to their grandchildren.