CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Sevilla it runs 1034 km to Salamanca; allow about 14 h 12 of riding. The stops in between: Merida and Caceres. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
The Ruta de la Plata sounds like a silver road, and generations of travellers have assumed it carried silver from the Americas. In fact the name probably comes from the Arabic word balata, meaning a paved way, and the road itself is much older: a Roman route running north from Seville to Mérida and on to Astorga, which pilgrims and drovers kept using for two thousand years. Seville is where it begins, and the city makes a fine place to start any ride.
Read the complete Seville write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seville is where the day begins. Next is Merida.
In the year 25 BC the Romans founded a colony here for veterans of their wars in Hispania, named it Emerita Augusta, and made it the capital of the province of Lusitania. Two thousand years later, Mérida has more Roman remains than anywhere else in Spain, and they are not roped off in a museum. They are in the streets. A long Roman bridge, around eight hundred metres, still crosses the broad Guadiana on dozens of arches and is walked daily by locals. A theatre and an amphitheatre sit side by side near the centre, and in summer actors perform classical plays in the theatre in the open air. On the edge of town the tall brick piers of an aqueduct, called Los Milagros, the miracles, march across a field.
Read the complete Merida write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mérida comes up about 434 km into the recorded legs. Next is Caceres.
Cáceres has two faces. The modern city spreads over the plain with shopping streets, apartment blocks and ring roads, and it is a normal busy Spanish provincial capital. Inside it, behind medieval walls, lies the old quarter, which is one of the best-preserved in Europe and has been a World Heritage Site since 1986. Here stand towers, palaces and churches of golden stone, built between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries by noble families who had made money in the wars of the reconquest and later in the Americas. Many of the towers were cut down to the level of the roofs on the order of the Catholic Monarchs, who wanted to curb the power of the nobility, and the stumps are still visible.
Read the complete Caceres write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 590 km into the recorded legs you reach Caceres. Next is Salamanca.
Salamanca glows. Its buildings are built from a golden sandstone that takes on a honey colour in low sun, and the effect, especially in the late afternoon in the Plaza Mayor, is memorable. The city stands on the Tormes river in western Spain, about 800 metres above sea level, and is one of the great university towns of Europe, with a student population that gives the old streets life well into the night.
Read the complete Salamanca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Salamanca closes the day.
Seville → Merida is 434 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Mérida → Caceres is 156 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Cáceres → Salamanca is 444 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.