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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Sevilla it runs 819 km to Gijón; allow about 9 h 47 of riding. It goes by way of Merida, Caceres, Salamanca and Zamora. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,100 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 191 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 266 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, about halfway. Next is Zamora.
Zamora is a city built on a rock above the Duero, and it is overlooked in a way that suits its quiet temperament. The old town sits on a ridge on the north bank, with a medieval stone bridge reaching across the river, and the whole place feels slightly apart from the rest of the busy plain around it. It is said to have more Romanesque churches than any other city in Europe, about two dozen, built mostly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when Zamora was a frontier town between the Christian north and the Moorish south. Their rounded arches and plain stone walls give the streets a sober, weathered look that is especially fine in evening light.
Read the complete Zamora write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zamora sits at 1058 km, about halfway. Next is Leon.
León has been a city for nearly two thousand years, since a Roman legion made camp here, and the old rectangle of the Roman walls is still partly visible in the heart of the town. The name itself comes from the legion, not from the lion that now sits on the city's flag, though locals prefer the lion. In the Middle Ages León was the capital of a kingdom, and later it became a major stop on the pilgrim road to Santiago, so the old quarter is full of churches, monasteries and inns that pilgrims used for rest.
Read the complete Leon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
León comes up about 675 km into the recorded legs. Next is Gijon.
Gijón stands on a rocky headland on the Bay of Biscay, in the heart of Asturias, and the Ruta de la Plata, which began far to the south in the hot plains of Extremadura, ends here with a gust of Atlantic air. The route follows an old road whose name comes from the Arabic word for a paved way, and which carried Roman legions, medieval pilgrims and merchants between the south and the north of Spain. After the dry high country of the meseta, arriving at the cold, green coast is like entering another country, and in a sense it is.
Read the complete Gijon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gijón closes the day.
Seville → Merida is 191 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Mérida → Caceres is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Cáceres → Salamanca is 201 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Salamanca → Zamora is 65 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Zamora → Leon is 143 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
León → Gijon is 144 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.