Vía de la Plata
26.8 km, 42 m up and 151 m down, through 1 place, 1 of which has somewhere to sleep. Where you stop is up to you.
Every place on the path in order, with the distance from Villafranca de los Barros. 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 stretch of the camino between Villafranca and Torremejía includes a long straight gravel section which is an original Roman road. It makes a few minor twists and turns but eventually heads directly into, through, and out of Torremejía.
If you made your way to the N-630 while in Torremejía there is no need to retrace your steps. Follow it out of town and you will rejoin the camino which emerges from your right. If follows adjacent to the road before arrows and a bollard direct you towards a path on your right. It passes the Ence Mérida factory and heads straight to the outskirts of Mérida where the arrows are a bit unclear. When you emerge onto the road you will see ahead of you a bridge over the river; you need to follow the trail (not the road) which passes underneath that bridge. It leads directly to a small riverside park and at the end of the park is the pedestrian bridge over the río into Mérida.
Distance, climb and descent are measured along the GPS track for this camino — 63 recorded points across this span, the same track the app carries. The town-to-town figures in my data put it at 26.5 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.