When you stand in the valleys behind Planes, in the country between Alcoi and the coast, it is easy to forget how recently they were emptied. The Racó del Condoig shelter lies about five kilometres from Planes, in a landscape of dry-stone terraces, cherry and almond trees and narrow gorges. The paintings in the shelter belong to the Levantine tradition, listed by UNESCO with other rock art of eastern Spain, and they were made so long ago that the people who made them would have seen the Moors as impossibly modern.
The Moors, in fact, give this place much of its human character. In the thirteenth century, after King Jaume I took the region, a Muslim leader called al-Azraq, the Blue One, rose against the Christians from strongholds in these valleys, and for years the area was a battleground of castles and ambushes. The Muslim farmers stayed on for centuries as vassals, building terraces and irrigation channels, until the great expulsion of 1609 emptied the valleys almost overnight. Many villages were refounded with settlers from elsewhere, which is why the local names still mix Arabic and Catalan roots.
The riding follows the folds of the land. Roads climb out of Planes, Beniarrés and the neighbouring villages through bends that come thick and fast, with the best of them on the cut-through lanes between valleys. They are narrow and often patchy, with loose gravel on corners and the occasional stray goat. Traffic is almost absent, though cyclists like these hills too. Spring, when the cherry blossom is out, and early autumn are the best times, while midsummer afternoons are hot enough to make you rethink your plan.
Planes has fewer than eight hundred people and no certainty of fuel, so do not rely on it. Beniarrés, a little larger, has a reservoir with some shade and a small bar or two, but for proper services you will want to go to Cocentaina or Alcoi. Carry water, since the scrub is dry, and bring a torch for the shelter.