Ramón Cabrera, known to his enemies and his admirers as the Tiger of the Maestrazgo, made this country famous in the 1830s. A Carlist general in the civil war that followed the death of King Ferdinand VII, he turned the high plateaus and fortified villages of the Maestrat into a stronghold, and from his capital at Morella he held much of the countryside for years, to the despair of the government armies sent against him. The war ended in 1840 with a defeat, but the Carlists rose again in the 1870s, and the memory of these campaigns still colours the way people in the Maestrat see their history.
You can see why the plateau suited a guerrilla. The country is a maze of limestone gorges, stone walls and ruined farms, with high villages built for defence, and anyone who knows it can disappear in an afternoon. Today the same terrain makes good riding, with roads that curl along ridges, drop into ravines and climb out again. The surface is mostly fine, the traffic light, and the Cingle de la Mola Remigia, a cliff over the Gasulla ravine, is five kilometres from Benassal.
Morella, an hour to the north, is the best-preserved medieval town in the region, with an almost complete circuit of walls and a castle on a rock. Its main street is lined with arcades, and its sweet flaons, pastries of cheese and almond, are sold everywhere. The ride there along the N-232 is a fine one, with long runs of bends and views over wild country.
For fuel, Alcalà de Xivert, thirty-three kilometres away, is the sure answer, though Villafranca del Cid has some services. Remember that the shelters are protected and visits are controlled, so ask before you go and keep your hands off the walls. If you have time, the old walls of Morella are worth walking at dusk, when the stone turns amber and the swifts come out; the town is a good place to understand why a guerrilla army could hold a region for years, with its single steep street, its great gate towers and the castle looking down over everything.