The postcard view of Cuenca is the Casas Colgadas, the hanging houses, wooden balconies thrust out from the rim of the Huécar gorge, one of which houses a museum of Spanish abstract art. The less photographed truth is that the old town is really an exercise in vertical living. Every building here exists because someone found a way to build on a ledge too small for it, and the result, recognised by UNESCO in 1996, is a medieval city that looks balanced on a blade.
You get the best view from the opposite side, by climbing to the footbridge of San Pablo, a metal span over the gorge which replaced an older stone one, and looking back as the late afternoon sun lights up the cliffs. For riders, the little road beside the Huécar and the loop around the Júcar are pleasant, but the real roads start outside the town, where the plateau opens into a country of juniper, pine and pale rock.
North and east of the city lies the Ciudad Encantada, a natural labyrinth of limestone towers sculpted by wind and water, and beyond it the Serranía, whose roads wind across high ground at over a thousand metres. Mornings can be cold and wet with mist in the gorges, and summer afternoons turn hot and dry, so the best months are May, June and September. Winter brings ice, and some mountain sections are slow when snow has fallen.
Cuenca itself is a working city with fuel on the way in and out, and with food that suits cold weather: stews, roast lamb and gamey flavours that have not changed much in centuries. Be wary of cobbles and tight turns inside the old quarter, and note that some streets are closed to cars at certain times. If you can only manage one thing here, make it the walk across the San Pablo bridge at dusk, with the lights coming on in the houses opposite and swifts screaming overhead in summer.