Villaroges is one of those names that appears on a map of prehistoric sites rather than a road atlas, somewhere in the high country of the Alt Maestrat between Benassal, Culla and Vilafranca. It belongs to the extraordinary concentration of rock art in the mountains of Castellón, where small painted shelters are scattered through the ravines, protected as part of the UNESCO-listed rock art of the Mediterranean Basin. Exactly where the panel lies, and whether it can be visited, is a question for the local tourist office or the museum at Tírig; treat the name as an invitation into one of the emptiest and most beautiful corners of eastern Spain.
The Maestrat takes its name from the Masters of the military orders, the Templars and later the Order of Montesa, who controlled these mountains after the Christian conquest in the thirteenth century. Their legacy is a landscape of fortified villages on crags, Gothic churches and stone farmsteads, all bound together by tens of thousands of kilometres of dry-stone walls. In 2018 UNESCO recognised the art of dry-stone walling as intangible heritage, and nowhere shows why better than the slopes around Vilafranca, where walls and stone huts climb every hill.
Benassal is famous for its water. The Font d'en Segures spring has been bottled for generations, and the village has a pleasant old centre with a fortified gate. Culla, perched on a summit, is a tiny medieval village with views in every direction and a reputation as one of the most beautiful in the region. The ride up to it is short, steep and twisty.
The roads here are the reward for the effort of getting inland. The CV-15 runs through the region, and the minor roads branching off it climb over passes and along ridges at around a thousand metres, with deep valleys below and little traffic. Corners are frequent, the surface is fair to good, and you will often have the road to yourself. Cold is a real factor: snow is common in winter, frost can linger in shaded bends, and even in summer evenings at altitude are fresh.
Fuel needs planning. Benassal and Vilafranca are small but have services; Alcalà de Xivert, on the coast, is the nearest larger town. Eat wherever you find a busy bar: the cooking is mountain fare, lamb, sausages and thick stews.