Roca Roja, the red rock, is a fitting name for this corner of inland Catalonia, where sandstone and conglomerate cliffs glow rust-coloured in the evening light above pine forest and small terraced fields. The point lies in the hills between Querol and Mediona, where the comarques of Alt Camp, Alt Penedès and Anoia meet, a rugged, thinly populated upland that most people speed past on the motorway between Barcelona and Lleida without realising it exists.
Querol is the centre of this little world, a tiny village below a ruined castle on a rocky spur, at the head of the valley of the Gaià river. Follow the Gaià downstream and you reach the Cistercian monastery of Santes Creus, one of the three great monasteries of the Cistercian route in Catalonia, founded in the twelfth century and the burial place of several kings of Aragon. It makes a fine destination for a ride, with its Gothic cloister and the calm of the monks' gardens.
The roads here are made for motorcycles: narrow, twisting, mostly well surfaced and almost empty on weekdays. The route from Querol through Pontils and down toward Santa Coloma de Queralt, or east toward Sant Joan de Mediona and the Penedès, climbs and falls through forest with hairpins and blind crests, so keep to your side of the road, as local drivers and cyclists often do not. In summer the heat can be oppressive and forest fire risk high; in winter morning frost lingers in the shaded valleys. Late spring and October are ideal.
There is little in the way of services around Querol, so plan accordingly. Igualada, about seventeen kilometres away, is the nearest large town, with fuel, shops and restaurants, and is known for its leather-tanning history and a museum devoted to it. Sant Joan de Mediona and Santa Coloma de Queralt have bars and small shops, and the Penedès to the southeast offers wineries where you can taste cava, though of course you will save that for after parking the bike.