The Cities of Old Castile Feb 2003

I flew to Madrid on a gloomy London day and immediately headed out of the city on a train that meandered slowly westwards. The sun sank slowly over the horizon and England seemed a great deal further away than it was. I had a vague plan in my head that involved a relaxed tour of the cities of Castile and Galicia, accompanied by plenty of wine and football. At the end of a fortnight, I'd come home fluent in Spanish and with a greater understanding of Castilian history. To be honest, I realise the wine will quickly erase those brain cells charged with learning new stuff and the only phrases I'll pick up will be things like 'relegation dogfight' or 'he was ONSIDE, you nonce'. But, I'm too lazy to do it the proper way.

I adore Spain, it's easily my favourite country and if only it didn't treat vegetarians in the same way it did the Moors, I'd live here permanently. Avila was my first stop; a sandstone city surrounded by a perfect ring of 11th century walls. Avila's history is intertwined with that of St Theresa, a 16th century nun and mystic who is the joint patron saint of Spain. I spent a day in her footsteps. In the convent where she nunned, I saw her rosary beads, her trusted crucifix and, (that revolting relic of Catholic saints), a mummified finger. She was much concerned with humility and rode around Spain on a mule, establishing convents as she went. She rested in barns or slept in disreputable inns, which inspired her most famous phrase, 'Life is a night in a bad hotel'.

Now, I'm not one of those religious nutcases, but I am quite fond of St Theresa due in no small part to the fact that she could, by all accounts, levitate. I have a friend who once levitated at a party in Walthamstow, but it was later found to be a trick. St Theresa, however, could hover at will. Probably even in northeast London. After her death in 1582, her body was rather impolitely dismembered and scattered throughout the country. During the dictatorship, General Franco ended up with a limb that he would obsessively carry around in a briefcase whenever he went dictating:
Mrs Franco: 'Come on Franco, we're late. You got your keys?'
Franco: 'Si.'
Mrs Franco: 'Wallet?'
Franco: 'Si.'
Mrs Franco: 'The mummified arm of Saint Theresa?'
Franco: 'In my briefcase, woman'

Avila was short on sin, strong on saints and thanks to its status as the highest city in Spain, icy cold at night. Locals describe the weather as nine months of winter and three months of hell and I saw rain, snow and sunshine in the two days I stayed. I left in a swirling mist and caught the train to Salamanca.

In Salamanca I found a hotel overlooking the main square. The town is famed for its ancient university and regarded as Spain's equivalent of Oxford. The distinctive brick used in this region is red tinged sandstone and when the sun hits the buildings, the town is transformed into a series of elegant plazas framed by baroque balconies. Not that I could see any of this form my 10 Euro hotel room as it had no windows. Still, the Winnie the Pooh bed cover more than made up for that. St Theresa would have loved it.

The first place everyone heads to in Salamanca is the old university building. On the facade is a huge plateresque collage of shields, skulls and statues surrounding an image of Ferdinand and Isabel, the Catholic monarchs who defined the Spanish golden age. Hidden among all this heraldry is a frog. If you spot it unaided, you'll have good luck and be married within the year. An oxymoron if you ask me, but it didn't matter because I couldn't find it. Even after someone pointed out where it was.

I wandered around the narrow streets hemmed in by convents and two huge cathedrals. The university buildings blend in seamlessly and as the blue skies returned, shadows were thrown about and a more beautiful town appeared. The university walls are full of inscriptions painted in bull's blood. A tradition upon graduation. I thought back to my own graduation and wished I had left a more significant memento of my studies instead of drinking lots of lager and being sick. In the evening I joined the paseo, that cultural custom where families and friends stroll around town dressed in their finest. I stomped around in my new boots trying to tread on those parts of my feet yet to blister. With all the lights trained on its 13th century sandstone, Salamanca was incredible after dark. I came out of my hotel onto the plaza, looked up and said 'wow. I decided I could live in Salamanca, although it was more elegant than I'll ever be.

From Salamanca I headed west to Ciudad Rodrigo, the last major town before the Portuguese border. I arrived at siesta time and for two hours had the whole place to myself. Like all historical Spanish towns, Ciudad Rodrigo has Christian walls built directly over Moorish foundations and on top of the roofs sit hundreds of squawking storks. The sun was blazing as I walked along the ancient walls, circling this beautiful town. I dived into the centre and spent a happy hour wandering among the plazas and blasted white trees that characterise this part of the world. I had a look at the 15th century castle. Not only did it defend the town from numerous waves of barbarians, but it was also my hotel. Having spent just thirty quid on three nights accommodation, I decided some luxury was in order. My window overlooked Portugal and there was hardly any room in my rucksack for all the bathroom accessories. I looked into the mirror in my marble bathroom and was delighted to have got a tan.

Curiously in this far western province of Spain, there was a plaque by the cathedral commemorating a British Major General, Robert Crawford. In1812, Crawford was part of the Duke of Wellington's regiment sent to combat Napoleon's megalomania in the Peninsular War. The British stiffened their upper lips and blasted Jonny Frenchman out of the city. Mr Crawford was one of many British casualties.

Back in the castle / hotel I found a way up onto the roof and sat down among the turrets to read. I watched the sun set and dashed inside as the temperature plummeted. I sank into the bath and thought to myself, 'what a beautiful hotel'. Not the sort of place St Theresa would have approved of and I couldn't get used to people calling me Sir. I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see some foreign diplomat standing impatiently behind me. Back in the bath, I watched my tan disappear down the plughole. I guess it was just dirt.

There wasn't much Spain left to the west, so I retraced my steps to Salamanca and headed to Tordesillas. I chose it because it straddled a major junction and I had no idea where to go next. I delighted the local tourist office who weren't expecting foreign tourists in February. I came out with a bag of leaflets in various languages, most of which I didn't recognise. I spied a wine shop near the main square and unexpectedly had a great half hour in the company of the endearingly enthusiastic and slightly eccentric proprietor. I showed some interest in the locally produced wine and before I knew it, she was leading me into Mozarabic tunnels in the cellar beneath the shop. This building was sat atop an old Arabic house. We crawled through arches that have stood here for a thousand years. She dashed off Castilian history with a flourish and explained the role of Tordesillas in determining the succession of the Spanish monarchy. In rat-a-tat Spanish she reeled off the medieval kings and queens. They all had idiosyncratic suffixes after their names; Pedro the Cruel, Juan the Bald etc. She pointed out the convent where Juana the Mad could go loopy without embarrassing the royal court and mentioned many others whose names I forget but were probably 'Pablo the Twatty' or 'Alfonso the Spaz'.

I emerged back onto ground level and into the present day and worked out my next move; tomorrow was Saturday and therefore time to devote some time to a part of Spanish history that is perhaps the most important of all; Football.

Valladolid wasn't a pretty city. It looked like someone had started with the right intentions and designed a smart central plaza, then got fed up and left the rest to the towerblock builders. Luckily I hadn't come for the architecture; I was here for a football fix. Valladolid aren't the trendiest team in Spain, in fact they go out of their way to invite ridicule by wearing lilac striped shirts. They took on the rather more fashionable Deportivo La Coruna on a bitter night in a gap between the towerblocks. The three not so wise old men next to me thought I was an English scout. To fuel their curiosity I asked the occasional 'scout' question, like how old the right back was and made a quick note. They asked which team I was representing. I just tapped my nose conspiratorially. Next morning I found the towerblock housing the bus station and left the big ugly city amid a huge anti-war demonstration. I headed to Leon.

If I was trying to be intellectual I would say I went to Leon to enjoy the famous stained glass in the gothic cathedral or to tour the monastery with its 11th century Romanesque frescos and tombs of ancient kings.

The unintellectual (and real) reason I went was because the guidebook said it had a good pizza restaurant. And it was spot on! The stained glass was alright, the Romanesque frescos fairly Romanesque and the tombs full of the dusty bones of Fernando the Burpy and Carlos the Smug, but the pizza was done to perfection; the crust grilled just long enough to lose its doughy texture but not so much that it became too crispy to cut. Leon was a long way to come for a pizza, but vegetarians are the modern day infidels in Spain, and I will always associate the town with a magnificent margherita.

After the pizza pilgrimage, I decided to join a real one and caught the train to Santiago de Compostella in the province of Galicia, far up in the top left hand corner of Spain. The city translates quite poetically as 'St James of the field of Stars', for it is here (supposedly) that the bones of the saint lie. St James was the first cousin of Jesus and, boiiing!, the son of Zebedee. The city is one of the holiest pilgrimage destinations in the whole of Christendom, ranking alongside the shrine at Lourdes and the Doctor Martens stand at Upton Park.

Galicia is a land of cause and effect. The effect is lush green hills and wooded valleys. The cause is rain. Lots of it. The Galicians have Celtic origins, their own language and the local music scene is centred around that instrument of oral torture, the bagpipe. It is also vegetarian hell. Roasted suckling pig is the delicacy in these parts and is served up as if it has just been embalmed. It reminded me of the dish of the day in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe from the Douglas Adams series of books. I was half expecting it to start recommending parts of its flesh to the diners, "Sir, I've been fed on acorns and my rump is deliciously tender." There's no point asking for vegetarian food, they just think you're an idiot for passing up the opportunity.

As the train was dropping down from the mountains into Santiago a lady asked me for help with her baggage. Then another did the same. Before long, my, ahem, bulging muscles were in continuous use. One baggage hold-all was so large, I can only assume the tiny old lady owner was going to put it on a trolley, zip herself inside and ask for a push into town. It was dark after I had unloaded the whole train's luggage and most hotels were filling up fast. I found a room after several attempts, but it was b*llock freezing cold. I slept in my woolly hat. Even St Theresa would have had second thoughts about this place. I upgraded the next day to a hotel for the warm blooded.

The cathedral at Santiago is carved from granite. It is intricate and overwhelming. The grey brick silhouetted against the night sky was like walking into a vision of Mordor. If you can imagine Middle Earth populated by drenched Christians rather than Hobbits, that is. Because of the wet climate, moss sprouts between the bricks and plants emerge in the cracks. It looked as if the cathedral was in bloom. It was the end of the line for the pilgrims and many smiled in the way that Jehovah's Witnesses do when you open your front door in your underwear. Inside the cathedral, you place your hand in the carved marble tree of life and ascend the altar over the crypt of St James. I felt a bit of an outsider but I love the religious atmosphere of Spain rather than the religion itself, and it's hard not to believe in something when you're surrounded by the intimidating iconography of the cathedral and the intense application of the thousands who have trodden the path to Santiago every day for centuries and centuries.

It was easy to be cynical in Santiago but the pilgrims I met had some amazing stories to tell. Some had endured the most wretched lives and wished to prove something to themselves, others took it as an opportunity for seeing Spain; tourism the hard way. One woman I spoke to had walked all the way from France. She stomped over the Pyrenees in the middle of winter and had (unsurprisingly) contracted bronchitis along the way. And she was 68 years old! I really admired her. She wanted to do something that tested her physically and replenished her psychologically. She was a fascinating lady and didn't overplay the faith element when I said the only religion I believe in kicks off at three on a Saturday afternoon.

It rained relentlessly all day so I dived into a couple of museums. The first was a history of regional agriculture. And the text was all in Galician which appears to be a cross between Spanish, Portuguese and Klingon. To be honest no translation could have saved it from being the dullest museum in history. A whole room on traditional shoe making? Fantastic. A gallery devoted to fishing nets? No, please, me first.

I left Santiago the following morning (it was raining of course) and after I had loaded everyone's luggage back onto the train, we rode through the green mountains back into Castile. As if the heavens were controlled by the flick of a switch, it immediately stopped raining.

And started snowing.