Stage Utrera - Alcalá de Guadaíra

The rather more than eighteen kilometres between Utrera and Alcalá de Guadaíra make one of the easiest days on the Vía Augusta: a gentle profile, a contained distance and terrain that poses no difficulty at all. The elevation change is spread over very gradual rises that are barely felt underfoot, and the stage is done in a little over four and a half hours at an unhurried pace.

Leaving Utrera, the path puts the Consolación sanctuary behind it and moves into the Seville countryside along broad farm tracks. The first third runs among fields of cereal and olive groves, with pasture and fenced grazing where fighting bulls are raised: the district is one of the historic cradles of the fighting bull, and the ganaderías are as much a part of the landscape as the crops.

In the central section the ground undulates slightly and the path gains and loses height without effort. It is an open, bright stretch with very little shade, in which the first signs of the Seville metropolitan belt begin to appear: isolated warehouses, surfaced lanes and the odd scattered residential development.

The approach to Alcalá de Guadaíra is made along the valley of the river that gives the town its name. The setting changes character as the water draws near, with riverside vegetation and the Oromana pine wood, a wooded spot that offers the best rest of the day before entering the town itself.

Alcalá de Guadaíra receives the pilgrim beneath the outline of its castle, an extensive Almohad fortress that commands the town from above. On the banks of the Guadaíra stand the flour mills that made the town's name: for centuries it supplied Seville with bread, which earned it the nickname of Alcalá de los Panaderos. It is a complete end of stage, and just one day from the finish.