Via Lemovicensis: Don’t You Forget about Me

Tom left first, at 6:05 AM. Herve and I were just a few minutes behind him. Of course, half the albergue had emptied out before then.

It was cool in the dimly-lit streets of Estella, but the forecast called for the heat wave to continue at least through the end of the week.

We soon passed through the gate out of the old part of town into the more modern construction. We walked down a busy commercial street for a while, and then the Camino wound its way through some urban neighborhoods.

We seamlessly passed into the urban suburb of Ayegui without ever having left the sidewalk. In the midst of the apartment blocks, the village church stood like a relic, surrounded by scaffolding and quite inaccessible.

At 6:35 we finally came to our first open café and had our (first) breakfast. We left at just about 7:15, back on the sidewalk.

Soon though, we were on the gravel path walking up to a blacksmith shop. I’ve admired this man’s work for many years, and Francine and I both unknowingly bought exactly the same Camino shell necklace from him about a month apart in 2023. This man is an absolute artist.

In fact, Herve had a conversation with the smith and told him exactly that, that he was an artist. I don’t know if he hasn’t heard that before, or in a long while, but this man began weeping, and Hervey began to weep as well.

Say the things you need to say. You never know how much somebody needs to hear it.

As we were walking away, Herve said to me,”this is going to be an emotional day”.

The next step was just a few hundred meters down the road: the famous wine fountain of Irache. 

By 7:45, we were back on the gravel road. By 8 AM, this took us properly into the town of Irache, and we were on the sidewalk again.

The town soon ended, and we were back on gravel. There were fields on either side of us, and in the distance on the right we could see the looming cliffs we first spotted yesterday. Ahead of us was a conical hill with a ruined castle on top.

The Camino wound up and down through the landscape, occasionally going through dense forest before returning to the bare hills.

We entered the little village of Ázqueta, under the shadow of the hill and ruined castle, right about 8:45.

We stopped in a bar called l’Antorcha for a second breakfast. I’ve stopped in this place many times before, through various changes in ownership. The current owner is a Dutch pilgrim who years ago fell in love with the woman running the local albergue. 

They’re sort of a retro 80s kitsch theme about the place. It has the original Pac-Man! It also has a jukebox playing various songs from the mid to late 80s, basically my college career.

We saw many familiar faces there, and many pilgrims I have met in the last few days: Tom from Germany, Appalachian John, Amy from Texas, Katie, many others.

While I was in line waiting to buy my yogurt, the Simple Minds song “Don’t You Forget About Me” came on. In college, this was one of my favorite songs.

And those are also the last words I said to Francine every evening while she was in hospice after I kissed her good night. Those were the last words I ever said to her, just before I told her that I loved her one last time. 

So I’m in the middle of nowhere in Spain, in line to buy a yogurt at a little roadside café, and I’m weeping uncontrollably. 

I’m sure I made quite a sight to the rest of the gathered pilgrims as I made my way outside to the table.

As Herve said, today was going to be an emotional day.

The Camino continued through the tiny hillside village and into the hilly farmland and vineyards beyond, on the same sort of gravel road we’d been following most of the morning. It was just past 9:30, and the heat was already oppressive. I put up the umbrella.

There were hills, some of them quite steep. I was deep in contemplation, and I fell far behind my friend.

At about 9:50, I came upon a little sheltered spring just before the village Villamayor de Montjardin. I don’t remember ever seeing the water level so low there. I gingerly went down the steps to soak my buff in the water. I can’t begin to explain how good the cool water felt on my neck.

The first time I came to this village, in 2013, it was snowing. Today, as I arrived at about 10:10, it was unbearably hot. I sought out a little shade at a bar and replenished my water supplies.

I had a great conversation with Appalachia John, though if I’m honest I probably spent too much time there. The stunning 12th-century church was locked with double padlocks.

It was 10:45 before I was back on the Camino, and there were probably three hours of walking or more left with no support in the open hill country in the blazing sun.

But it was beautiful.

As I descended into the valley, a cooling wind blew through. The combination of that and my umbrella made this section of the walk delightful. There was even occasional tree cover, which kept the ground cool.

The umbrella only helps so much – it obviously keeps the heat of the sun off your head and body, but if the ground has been absorbing the heat, it just radiates it back up to you.

The sides of the road were heaped with cottonwood fluff in quantities that looked like snow drifts. Entirely too soon, the Camino was back under the unsheltered sun.

And this was the case for the next 12 km between Villa Mayor and Los Arcos. The road surface was extremely consistent. The only thing that really changed from kilometer to kilometer was the color of the gravel.

Just after 11 AM, I passed a shelter with a lovely sort of sculpture shrine on top. I would love to know the story behind this.

I walked the broad gravel road through the rolling hills for hours. Past fields of green and amber and brown. Past olive groves and vineyards. Past the bare hills.

Often, the road was lined with wildflowers, with scarlet poppies and purple thistles and daisies and scotch broom and others I could not identify.

Occasionally, there were ruins.

At about 11:55, I arrived at a food truck – “food truck” doesn’t do it justice. I arrived at a place of respite it called itself “the Oasis”, and it was no exaggeration. Tom and Herve were just leaving, so we made arrangements for a late lunch in Los Arcos.

I had a snack and a drink, and I was walking again by 12:15.

I could feel the heat shimmering up from the gravel, and the breezes had died away to the merest whispers.

Sometime before 12:30, I began to notice a general deterioration of the road. There were places without any gravel at all, and places where grass was now growing up through the road. Great muddy gouges had been dug in places by tractors. 

There was a bit of blessedly cool breeze as I descended a hill.

On a distant hill, I could see what appeared to be a monastery, or possibly a castle. 

At 12:15, the Camino turned down a narrower road and I briefly enjoyed shade as I passed woods climbing up the hillside to my left. As the path rounded the base of the hill, there was progressively less shade until I was in the blazing sun once more.

The path progressively narrowed, tall grass to each side, until it was difficult in places to properly use my sticks. There was no gravel now, only dirt. 

The path turned through a gap in the hills, and suddenly once again there was a delightful breeze.

Just before 1 PM, the path merged onto another broad gravel road. The breeze had grown into wind now, and the occasional gust buffeted the umbrella.

If she was awake when I said good night, Francine would often react when I said, “don’t you forget about me”. If she had been in a silly mood, she might make a funny face. Sometimes she would solemnly nod. If we were holding hands, she would squeeze.

The thing is, she did forget me. Often.

Eventually, she would remember and relax. But the only time she ever looked at me with fear in her eyes was during her final illness, when she couldn’t recognize this person who was feeding her, or helping her to sit up straight, or just sitting with her in the room.

You try to prepare yourself for this; it’s inevitable. The disease steals memory. But you can’t really prepare yourself for the moment it happens the first time. Or the tenth.

At just about 1:10, I crested a hill and saw part of the village for the first time, though most of it was still hidden by hills and trees.

About five minutes later, I entered the village of Los Arcos. The entrance of the town will fool you. It almost looks like some dusty western farm town as you come in. But as you walk the main street, the character of the village changes.

And then you cross the street, and suddenly you’re in a medieval village.

And by 1:30, I was in my albergue, one of the best anywhere, Casa de Fuente de Austria. Herve and Tom were in the courtyard, drinking a cool refreshing beverage when I arrived.

After the usual pilgrim chores, it was nearly 3:30 by the time we went out for a very late lunch. Well, more of a snack. I had some calamari, followed by ice cream.

The church was locked, but that didn’t stop me from praying outside in the narthex. 

At some point, a little after 5:30, someone came and opened the church.

I don’t know how to begin to describe Santa María de Los Arcos. How this magnificence was created in this little village beggars the imagination. 

It is an absolute explosion of Baroque. Unlike most Spanish churches, where the walls outside of the sanctuary are left as bare stone, these are painted with repeating exquisite floral signs.

The altars have to be seen to be believed. Any detail you look at has more details within it. It’s almost fractal. The detail is so obsessively minute, it becomes overwhelming. I couldn’t focus on more than a tiny bit of it at a time. Taken us a whole, it’s like a human glimpse into the kingdom of heaven. You can’t possibly comprehend it.

The myriad of detail on the vaulted ceiling and cupola are both painted and carved – and sometimes difficult to know which is which.

Amidst this information overload, the central image of the high altar – the seated Virgin and Child – completely subverts expectation. There is a simplicity here. Both faces bear gentle, knowing smiles. They both seem approachable, human. Mary’s smile, in particular, seems almost mischievous, but serene.

I don’t even like Baroque, but the whole of it worked on me as it was designed to, and I prayed here. I prayed for Francine, I prayed for my community and for those I’ve been asked to pray for. I prayed for my own deliverance. I prayed that I might live. 

“Don’t you forget about me” was a vain hope, asking for an impossible promise. And we both knew it and played along. It was a happy lie we told each other and ourselves. And that’s OK.

Date: 26 May 2026

Place: Los Arcos 

Today started: Estella 

Today’s Photos!