The Racó de Sorellets is tucked between Castell de Castells and Vall d'Ebo, and to reach it you cross some of the most rugged ground in northern Alicante. This is the country of the Serrella and its neighbours, a jumble of ridges and ravines that the sea breeze hardly reaches, where goats still graze and the villages cling to the sides of the valley. Pego sits ten kilometres away on the plain, and the gap in character between the two is startling.
There is a rhythm to the ride. The roads rise out of the coastal plain in slow bends, pass through pine and holm oak, and reach plateaus with long views that on clear days show the sea like a line of blue paint. Surface quality is usually fine, though in the narrow places you have to share the tarmac with the occasional tractor, and the afternoons in summer can feel merciless. The best month, in my view, is November, when the heat has gone and the air has that washed brightness.
The valley's history is the story of the Moriscos. When Philip III ordered their expulsion in 1609, the Vall d'Ebo and many neighbouring places lost almost their entire population, and the fields went wild, so the terraces you pass are a record of what was once a dense farming landscape. The rock shelters belong to a far earlier chapter of human life, to hunters and herders of the post-glacial world, but they share the same sense of people having left something behind.
Fuel and food are the practical points. Pego is the sure place for both, with bakeries, restaurants and a long tradition of rice cooking, while Castell de Castells and Vall d'Ebo offer a coffee and little else. Murla, a little further out, is quiet as well. Fill the tank before the climb, carry water, and leave room in the schedule for the unexpected pause when a view demands it.