Castellote is one of those villages in the Teruel Maestrazgo that seems to have been built by people who wanted to be left alone. Its houses pile up beneath a great rock wall topped by the ruins of a castle associated with the Knights Templar, and the Guadalope river winds below on its way into the Santolea reservoir. The Abrigo del Barranco Hondo, a painted rock shelter in a deep ravine outside the village, is part of the extensive collection of Levantine rock art scattered through these mountains, with small figures in red ochre that have survived on the stone for millennia.
The Maestrazgo is quietly one of the finest riding regions in Spain, and the roads around Castellote show why. The terrain is a jumble of limestone ridges, gorges and high plateaus, and the roads follow it faithfully, which means endless changes of direction, short steep climbs and descents into valleys where poplars line the river. Traffic is almost nonexistent outside the weekends, and the surface quality varies from fresh tarmac to patched and bumpy. Livestock and the occasional deer appear without warning, so it pays to ride with something in reserve.
The area is also rich in dinosaur fossils, and Castellote has a small paleontological centre linked to the Dinópolis network based in Teruel. Further along, the village of Molinos has the Grutas de Cristal, a show cave with fine formations that is cool to visit on a summer afternoon. Mas de las Matas, a little to the north, is a pleasant agricultural village with a handful of bars and shops on the main street.
The practical problem in this region is fuel. These are small villages, some of them with only a few hundred residents, and petrol stations are spaced far apart. The town of Andorra, about twenty five kilometres away, is the nearest of any real size, and Alcañiz to the north is the other reliable option. Fill up whenever you get the chance and do not assume the next village will have a pump. Winters are cold and can bring snow to the higher passes, while summer days are hot but the evenings cool down beautifully, which is when the Maestrazgo looks its best, with the rock walls glowing gold above dark pine.