Cullera is not where most people would look for prehistory. It is a busy beach town at the mouth of the Júcar, with high-rise apartments along the sand, a lighthouse on the point and rice fields stretching inland toward the Albufera lagoon. But the town has a mountain at its back, a limestone outcrop crowned by a castle and a sanctuary, and in that rock there are shelters, including the one known as the Abric de Lambert.
The shelter belongs to the long chain of painted sites along Spain's eastern side that UNESCO inscribed together in 1998, and its presence here is a reminder that this coast was inhabited and travelled long before anyone built a holiday flat. The panels at sites like this are often faint and fragile, and access is usually restricted. What you can easily see is the mountain itself: the road up to the castle of Cullera and the sanctuary of the Virgen del Castillo climbs in tight hairpins and gives a superb view over the mouth of the Júcar, the beaches and the green and silver patchwork of the rice paddies.
Riding around Cullera is mostly flat. The roads across the Albufera rice country, through Sueca and Fortaleny, run along embankments and irrigation channels, straight-ish and easy, though crosswinds off the sea can catch you. The real hills begin inland, past Corbera and Favara, where the roads climb into orange groves and pine. In summer, traffic toward the beaches is heavy, particularly on weekends, and the town centre is better avoided at the height of the season.
Food is the big draw here. Sueca considers itself a capital of rice and holds a well-known paella competition, and almost any restaurant in this belt will cook you a proper rice dish at lunchtime. Order it for two and give it time; locals eat it at midday, not in the evening. Fuel and every other service are easy in Cullera itself. The light over the paddies at dusk, when the water turns pink and the herons drift home, is reason enough to linger before heading back.