Climbers have made Albarracín famous as well as painters. The Pinares de Rodeno, the red sandstone forest around the town, hold one of the best bouldering areas in Europe, and every year thousands of climbers come to scramble over the rounded blocks with their foam crash pads on their backs. The Abrigo del Toro Negro, the Black Bull shelter, lies four and a half kilometres from the town in the same stone, and its name probably comes from a painted bull, one of the animals that the prehistoric artists liked best. It belongs to the body of Mediterranean rock art protected by UNESCO since 1998.
The climbing tells you something about the rock. Rodeno is a sandstone that is hard enough to grip and soft enough to be worn into pockets, with a rough texture that offers friction. The forest has been protected since 1995 as a landscape reserve, and the rules ask you to keep to marked paths, not to light fires and not to use chalk near the painted shelters, since chalk dust can damage the pigments. The mix of art and sport in one patch of forest makes for some tension, which regulators try to manage.
On a bike, the point is the approach. The road from Teruel is a good one, climbing into the sierra through a landscape of bare hills and pine, and then dropping to the gorge. At the final stretch, where the road follows the river and passes under the town walls, the scenery is almost theatrical. In summer evenings it is cool at this altitude, and many riders stay overnight in town to have the streets to themselves at dawn.
Fuel is not available in Albarracín, so you will need to fill up in Teruel, twenty-five kilometres off. On the way back, the Mudéjar towers of Teruel, decorated in green and white ceramic, are a good reward. If you go to the shelter, take water and a hat, and do not leave your bike unattended with luggage on it, because the forest car parks are busy at weekends.