My fingers are stained tempranillo red from picking the blackberries that grow wild on Galicia's coast. The small inky fruits pulse with sweetness, rendered tender and delicious by the Spanish sun. The berries are a welcome snack in the absence of lunch – to my dismay, I'd mistimed my arrival to the only restaurant around for miles, finding it shuttered and closed for siesta. The trail steers me and my partner inland past a lonely farmhouse. A grey cat naps on the sun-lit porch and a mighty pear tree casts dappled shade onto the garden, the branches ripe and heavy with fruit. A farmer sits a few yards away, scrubbing potatoes with his wife and young son. The conditioning of city life makes it feel somehow taboo to ask this stranger if I can have a pear. But I'm reminded that I am on a pilgrimage, and this is what pilgrims have done throughout the centuries. In?” The farmer disappears momentarily into his house and reappears with a bag, handing it to us and motioning to fill it. “,” he says. “.”
