Vía de la Plata
31.1 km, 281 m up and 122 m down, through 5 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 Olleros de Tera. 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.
From Olleros the camino follows a path to the dam on the east side of the Embalse de Agavanzal (4.3 km). Once over the dam it turns left to follow a path along the contours of the reservoir until it reaches Villar de Farfon.
The reservoir marks a shift in the landscape. The Tera valley opens up and you get your first real sense of the empty country ahead. No services here -- just water, sky, and the path forward.
The camino returns to a rural trail until it reaches the Rio Negro, just short of reaching the N-525. It crosses the river on a small pedestrian bridge and then passes under the N-525 to enter Rionegro.
The camino leaves Rionegro on the north side of the N-525 and soon crosses over the A-52 to follow a rural track until reaching the gas station and restaurant at the start of Mombuey.
As the camino gets deeper into the Zamora mountains, the villages get closer together but smaller. Few offer any services. The camino follows near the N-525 for a short distance before turning south to cross the motorway and the AVE line. After crossing, it passes through the small rural hamlets of Valdemerilla (4.6 km), Cernadilla (3.5 km), San Salvador de Palazuelo (1.8 km), and Entrepenas (3.4 km). It then turns back north to cross over the AVE, the motorway, and the N-525 into Asturianos.
A handful of stone houses along the path. No services. The depopulation of rural Zamora is visible here -- more empty buildings than occupied ones.
Another near-empty hamlet. No services. The Iglesia de la Asuncion has a simple stone facade that catches the light nicely if you're passing in the morning.
Distance, climb and descent are measured along the GPS track for this camino — 163 recorded points across this span, the same track the app carries. The town-to-town figures in my data put it at 31.3 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.