Vía de la Plata
21.3 km, 67 m up and 22 m down, through 4 places. Where you stop is up to you.
Every place on the path in order, with the distance from Álija del Infantado. 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.
Follow the road to La Nora del Río (3km). Arrows at the start of town are conflicting, the smaller ones send you through town (no services) while a giant one encourages you to turn left along a trail adjacent to the river. The river choice is the best option and you will follow it for the next few hours.
A tiny hamlet on the banks of the Rio Orbigo. No services. The camino follows the river from here, a pleasant stretch of walking that breaks up the meseta monotony.
The camino ahead passes near the villages of Villanueva de Jamuz (bar) (3.4km) and Santa Elena de Jamuz (3.8km) but does not actually enter them. At the far edge of Santa Elena it joins the road but only for a short distance, keep an eye open for the arrows which turn right and away from the road.
The path follows farm lanes to the A-6 motorway and here the camino turns left in search of a way beneath it... which happens to be along the road you left earlier. The camino follows the road until it bends to the left, where it instead turns to the right to enter La Bañeza via the back roads.
A small village just off the camino. A bar may be open but don't rely on it. The camino passes near but doesn't enter the village itself.
Santa Elena de Jamuz has been a pottery center for centuries. The local tradition produces unglazed terracotta with simple, functional forms -- water jugs, cooking pots, storage vessels. A few workshops still operate, co…
La Baneza is the second-largest town on this stretch and a natural resupply point before the final push to Astorga. With roughly 10,000 inhabitants, it has full services -- supermarkets, pharmacy, ATMs, restaurants, and …
Distance, climb and descent are measured along the GPS track for this camino — 212 recorded points across this span, the same track the app carries. The town-to-town figures in my data put it at 21.8 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.