Northern Castellón is a hard, empty, beautiful part of Valencian Spain, a country of limestone ridges and terraced slopes some thirty kilometres back from the Mediterranean, and the Abric Mas de la Roca belongs to it, about six kilometres from the village of Xert, whose name is spelled Chert in Catalan and Valencian. Xert has fewer than a thousand people, Canet lo Roig and Catí are similar, and everything here is small and old.
An abric is a rock shelter, a shallow overhang in the cliff, and the shelters of this district were painted by prehistoric hunters. The images, known as Levantine rock art, show tiny red archers, deer and wild goats in motion, and they are protected by UNESCO as a group together with other sites across the Spanish Mediterranean.
Behind the village the land climbs westward, and farther on the high point of the region, Penyagolosa, a bald, pointed mountain of nearly eighteen hundred metres, dominates the horizon. A hermitage stands below it, and on certain days pilgrims walk through the forest from the surrounding villages in a long procession. Towards the coast, the old town of Sant Mateu, once the capital of the Maestrat under the military order of Montesa, still has handsome Gothic houses and a fortified church, and Peñíscola, on the coast, has the castle that sheltered the schismatic pope Benedict XIII, known as Papa Luna.
The riding is open, rural and light on traffic. The small roads that connect Xert, Catí and Canet climb over low passes between almond groves and stone walls, and the surface is usually fair, though in places you will find patches and loose gravel from the fields. The wind is strong in the afternoons, spring brings blossom, and summer is intensely hot and bright. Winter nights fall below freezing.
Fuel is thin on the ground. The villages are tiny, so plan to fill up on the coast, at Vinaròs or at Alcalà de Xivert, twenty-two kilometres away, which has nearly seven thousand people and several stations. Local food is simple and strong: olive oil, cured sausages, lamb, honey and a very good local cheese.