As a friend recently said: “it is the journey not the destination”

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For the followers we have neglected to keep up with during Covid Times a late apology. To the newly following this is a short intro and test draft. Need to shake out the little bits and make sure they still work as hoped.

We planned to walk this route in April 2020, then October 2020, then April 2021 …..

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The plan, if legs and other bits permit: Start in Sevilla and end up two months later in Santiago de Compostela.

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The Via de la Plata – a confused name.

“The term Vía de la Plata is commonly thought to derive from the modern Spanish word for silver, plata. The name actually derives from the Arabic word al-balat, which means cobbled paving and described the road as engineered by the Romans.[1]

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Another take on the Via

The Silver Route, despite its name, was never a road for the circulation of silver trade. Such denomination is due, as in other occasions, to a popular evolution due to a phonetic confusion. In the Andalusian period, this route was called al-Balat (the paved road), a word very frequent in other areas of Spain and the origin of place names such as Albalat and Albalate.[2] It is possible that this pronunciation led people to transfer the sound to that of the precious metal, and that is why it began to be called the Via de la Plata on an indeterminate date, but before 1504 and 1507, when it was first documented with Christopher Columbus and Antonio de Nebrija, respectively. In the first it appears simply as the Plata[3] and in the second in this form:”