Morella is the sort of town that makes riders stop in the middle of a long day just to look. It sits at about a thousand metres in the high Els Ports country of northern Castellón, ringed by more than two kilometres of medieval walls, with a castle on a crag above and a Gothic basilica below, and the whole mass of golden stone looks as if it grew out of the rock. The Cova del Llepus, about four kilometres away, is one of the painted shelters of the district, a Levantine site protected by UNESCO as part of the rock art of the Mediterranean basin in Spain. The ride links it with another cave, the Escoda, and with a hill the maps call the Peñón de Santo Espíritu.
The cave's second name, Partició, is Valencian for a division, which suggests that a boundary once ran past it. Boundaries matter in a country where villages were fiercely independent and where pastures, springs and stone walls were quarrelled over for centuries. Morella itself was a stronghold in the wars between Christian kings and Muslim rulers, and later in the Carlist wars of the nineteenth century, when its castle changed hands more than once.
The country is sheep country, high, windy and clear, with pastures and holm oak, deep ravines and the bulk of the Ports massif to the north. In winter, snow is not unusual, and Morella can be bitterly cold when the plain below is mild. Black truffles are collected in these hills, and the local pastry, the flaó, a sweet pie of cheese and aniseed, is worth hunting for in the old town.
For riders, this is excellent territory. The main road to the coast, which drops towards Vinaròs through a long run of bends, is one of the classic motorcycle roads of the region, and the lanes around Morella have an agreeable mix of long curves and tight turns. Surfaces are variable, so watch for gravel. Fuel is straightforward in Morella itself, a town of nearly three thousand people with several stations. Forcall and Cinctorres, smaller villages, are good for a coffee. Check the weather in winter, when ice can linger at altitude.