Vía de la Plata
24.5 km, 108 m up and 176 m down, through 3 places, 2 of which have somewhere to sleep. Where you stop is up to you.
Every place on the path in order, with the distance from Fuente de Cantos. 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.
There are as many marked routes through town as there are pilgrims to follow them, it is a bit of a mess. Follow whichever set you can find carefully and they will eventually exit the north side of town (NOT along the N-630) onto another farm track. It is level walking all the way to Calzadilla de los Barros.
Pass straight through Calzadilla and pick up the farm track once again. It returns to the road but only for 500m before it turns left sharply away from the road to return to farm tracks all the way to Puebla de Sancho Pérez, passing the Arroyo Atarja (4.7km).
After passing the Plaza España and Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) the camino passes to the right of the Iglesia de Santa Lucía and heads straight to join the BA-160 out of town. It bears left after passing a gas station to follow a smaller paved road into Zafra.
The camino through Zafra crosses most of the important landmarks. It enters town near the train station (if you arrived by train, leave the station and turn right) and follows the boulevard straight towards the Plaza España and the large Parque de la Paz. It turns left at the Plaza (before the Parador/Castle) and crosses it diagonally, and on the far end it turns right onto Calle Sevilla (a pedestrian road). From here it passes through the Plaza Grande and makes a right hand turn onto Calle del Conde de la Corte. It will pass through one small triangularly shaped plaza and then exit the old part of town onto the Calle López Asme. From here turn left (the Convento Albergue is ahead on your right) and then right at the Convento Albergue. From here it is straight to and across a roundabout on the N-432. After passing to the left of a housing development the camino returns to the countryside.
Distance, climb and descent are measured along the GPS track for this camino — 116 recorded points across this span, the same track the app carries. The town-to-town figures in my data put it at 23.8 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.