The Song of Mio Cid, the greatest of the Spanish epic songs of the Middle Ages, and one of the great epic poems of world literature, has as its hero Rodriguez Diaz de Vivar, El Cid Campeador. The story of this great hero of the Spanish re-conquest has given rise to a major cultural and tourist route that follows in his footsteps through the last period of his life: his banishment as ordered by King Alfonso VI of Castile in 1080.

The journey, of around 1,000 kilometres, is not a single linear trail. It starts in Vivar del Cid and ends in Valencia, where he died in 1099. Different stages of the trail explore parts of the provinces of Burgos, Soria, Guadalajara, Zaragoza, Teruel, Castellon , Valencia and Alicante, a handful of places that bring the traveller closer to the real or legendary figure of this great Spanish warrior.