Castell de Castells is a village of fewer than five hundred people, and the first thing you notice about it is how far from the sea it feels, though the Costa Blanca is only a short flight of hairpins below. The Racó de Gorgorí is one of the folded side-ravines in the dry limestone country around it, where the Serrella range closes the horizon to the south and the long back of Aitana stands behind that. The Valencian rock-shelter people painted here, in small red figures that sit under overhangs like notes pinned to a wall, and the whole region is part of the Mediterranean Basin rock-art listing UNESCO made in 1998.
The riding is the real reason to turn up on two wheels. You climb from Callosa d'en Sarrià, the loquat capital of Spain, through terraces of almond, olive and carob, and the road narrows as the valley does. Corners are tight but short, the asphalt is generally decent and the traffic is mostly the odd farm van and Sunday cyclists, so you can ride it at a friendly pace. Go in autumn or early spring. In July the rock holds heat like a storage radiator, and in February the shaded bends can stay damp well into the afternoon.
Be realistic about the paintings themselves. Shelters like this are small, often fenced, and their figures are a few centimetres to a hand's length tall: archers, goats, now and then a flicker of a deer. They were made by hunters and early farmers, and archaeologists still argue over exactly when, with answers spread across several thousand years after the ice age. Enjoy the place as much as the art, the quiet, the smell of rosemary and warm stone, the hawks working the cliff edge.
For fuel, do not count on the village. Pego, about thirteen kilometres away on the Marina Alta side, is the nearest proper town and has everything, and Callosa on the way up is a sound alternative. Castell de Castells and Vall d'Ebo, a smaller neighbour whose people were largely expelled in 1609 with the other Moriscos of the valleys, each have a bar where you can sit with a coffee and a view. Bring water for the walk and keep your helmet and jacket in the shade.