Behind Gandia, the orange groves climb into the folded limestone hills of La Safor, and among the tiny villages there, Palma de Gandía and Ador sit almost touching each other at the foot of the slopes. Cueva de la Clau is one of the many rock shelters in the Valencian hills that form part of the UNESCO-listed Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula, a scattered collection of hundreds of sites where prehistoric people painted hunters, animals, dancers and abstract signs on limestone overhangs.
What you can enjoy without any restrictions is the landscape. The Serra de la Safor and Mondúver rise behind the villages, with craggy limestone ridges, pine and scrub, and the smell of orange blossom in spring so thick it almost feels like weather. Below, the coastal plain spreads toward Gandia and the sea, a patchwork of citrus orchards and irrigation channels that the Moors laid out more than a thousand years ago.
The riding is lovely in a small-scale way. Narrow roads link villages like Alfauir, Ador and Villalonga, with tight corners, short climbs and quick descents. The road that winds past the Monastery of Sant Jeroni de Cotalba, near Alfauir, is a pleasant detour; the monastery was founded in the fourteenth century and has a mix of Gothic, Mudejar and later styles. Traffic is light apart from tractors and the odd cyclist, but surfaces can be dusty and patched, especially after rain. Summer heat is intense, so early morning rides, ideally from October to May, make more sense.
Gandia is only a few kilometres away and has everything: fuel, supermarkets, restaurants and the ducal palace of the Borgia family, who came from here before one of them became Pope Alexander VI. On the coast, Gandia's beach is long and busy in summer, and the local speciality is fideuà, a seafood dish like paella but made with short noodles, said to have been invented by fishermen here. A plate of it at a beachside restaurant after a morning in the hills is hard to beat.