The Port de Confrides is the kind of pass that never makes a poster but fills a rider's notebook. It carries the road over the shoulder of the Serra d'Aitana between the coast valleys and the inland basin of Alcoi, and from the top you look both ways, towards the sea haze on one side and the pale Mariola country on the other. Aitana itself, at 1,558 metres the highest summit in Alicante province, stands just north of the road, bald and stony and often wearing a little cloud.
Riding it is an exercise in rhythm. The climb from the Guadalest side is a long, regular pull with hairpins you can sit through in second gear, while the other flank is faster and more open, with the surface good in most places and the odd stretch of sandy grit where a barranc has washed across the tarmac after rain. Cyclists love this road, so expect them in spring and autumn and take it easy on the blind corners. Midsummer is hot even at height; October and April are the months to choose.
The shelters in this area come from a few thousand years of people moving between summer and winter pastures. Along the side-ravines the rock has been undercut into low overhangs, and some of those hold the red paint of the Levantine style, figures of hunters and animals that are small enough to miss if you walk quickly. This is a landscape where the sheep still follow old tracks, and the villages below, Benifato, Confrides, Benimantell, are built on the same logic of water first and view second.
Fuel is the practical point. The villages here are small and you should not rely on a pump; Cocentaina, a town of around eleven thousand people about thirteen kilometres out on the Alcoi side, is the reliable stop, and it is worth a coffee as well, because its medieval Palau Comtal and the old Fira de Tots Sants give it more character than most towns that size. Benilloba, Sella and Benimantell all have cafés where a rider in leathers will not look out of place, and the water from the village fountains is generally safe to drink, though read the sign first.