The Maestrat is a high, empty, wrinkled country in the north of Castellón province, and Cingle de l'Ermità is a cliff in the heart of it. A cingle is a rock band, a stratum of limestone that outcrops along a hillside like a belt. The shelter here, listed as Abric III, is one of a handful on this cliff, and carries Levantine paintings in the red pigment that gives the style its look. The nearest villages are small. Albocàsser has about fourteen hundred people, Catí under nine hundred, and neither is the place for anything beyond a coffee and a bottle of water.
Catí is famous in the region for its goat's cheese, which has a protected name, and the cheese shops on the main street are a good reason to stop. The route up to the shelter is on foot and the cliffs are impressive in the right light, with ochre and grey walls above a dry streambed.
Alcalà de Xivert, with a little over six thousand people, is the larger town that has fuel. It lies down towards the coast, near the Serra d'Irta, a rough natural park of coastal mountains. If your ride leaves it late, fill up there before heading for the interior, since pumps in the Maestrat are rare and distances are longer than the map suggests.
The roads are the real draw. From Albocàsser and Catí the tarmac climbs and drops through terraced olive groves and holm oak, with more corners per kilometre than a rider can count. Surfaces are variable, good on the main roads and rough where winter water has found a way in. Traffic is almost absent midweek. The wind is a factor on exposed ridges, and fog can sit in the valleys on cold mornings.
Spring and autumn are the seasons to come. The Maestrat's history, from the Knights Templar and then the order of Montesa who ran this country in the Middle Ages to the Carlist wars of the nineteenth century, is written in the stone farmhouses and fortified villages. It is a place where a half-day detour turns into a whole day easily.