Camino Francés
34.4 km, 86 m up and 126 m down, through 4 places, 3 of which have somewhere to sleep. Where you stop is up to you.
Every place on the path in order, with the distance from Calzadilla de los Hermanillos. Most are too small to sleep in — a fountain, a chapel, a bar that may or may not be open — but they are what the day is actually made of.
The Vía Trajana continues through flat farmland before converging with the Camino Real route ahead of Mansilla de las Mulas.
Bar Elvis, quite possibly the most famous bar on the Camino, occupies the main square. The owner is a character, and the walls and ceiling are covered in pilgrim graffiti — this is one of the few places where writing on …
Look back when leaving town — the best view of the walls is from the west side. Much of the road between here and Puente de Villarente runs alongside the highway.
Continue straight along the road toward Puente de Villarente. The terrain is flat and unvarying.
The bridge here once posed a serious threat to pilgrims when the river ran high, and as a result the town became home to several pilgrim hospices. The current bridge is long and multi-arched, spanning a broad riverbed th…
As you leave Puente de Villarente, watch for arrows pointing you along a trail to the right, up a small hill toward Arcahueja. It's fairly well-marked but follows a service road that's often lined with parked trucks and can be disorienting.
Continue straight past the playground and climb toward the Alto del Portillo.
Distance, climb and descent are measured along the GPS track for this camino — 258 recorded points across this span, the same track the app carries. The town-to-town figures in my data put it at 16.5 km.
Esta entidad ha sido beneficiaria de una ayuda del Programa de incentivos a la movilidad eficiente y sostenible (MOVES III), gestionado por la Xunta de Galicia a través del Instituto Enerxético de Galicia (INEGA) en el marco del Real Decreto 266/2021, y cofinanciada por la Unión Europea — NextGenerationEU, dentro del Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia.