Las Balsillas means the little pools, and in a sandstone forest where rain drains away fast, a hollow that holds water is worth naming. What matters is the setting: red rock under dark pine, with a floor of needles that muffles every sound.
The rodeno here is the same stone that colours Albarracín's walls, a sandstone laid down by rivers some two hundred and fifty million years ago, in the Triassic, and it still has the look of dried mud and ripple marks. Wind and rain have sculpted it into rounded boulders that sit on narrow stems, and into low overhangs that sheltered the painters whose small red bulls, goats and hunters are scattered over this district. They are a small part of the Levantine art that UNESCO recognised in 1998, and the area around Albarracín has one of the largest concentrations.
If you ride in from the Teruel direction you will find that the plateau feels strangely like northern Europe. At 1,200 metres the air is thin and clear, the pines resemble those of the Scottish Highlands, and in autumn mushroom pickers fill the forest tracks. A quiet minor road threads through the trees on the way to Bezas and Orihuela del Tremedal, and it offers gentle bends and a surface that is fine in the main with frost damage in a few spots. Snow can close the high roads between December and March.
Albarracín has a handful of rooms, a few bars and restaurants and a very small supermarket, and since the town has barely a thousand residents, fuel is something you want to have sorted out before you arrive. Teruel, twenty-five kilometres off, has everything, from pumps to the famous ham. Keep your bike on the paved areas by the forest, because the sandstone sand is soft and the forest is protected.