Abrigo del Torico del Pudial and Peñón de Santo Espíritu
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
485 km
Riding-time estimate
8 h 56
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 485 km round trip from Bordón - roughly 8 h 56 in the saddle. It goes by way of Coveta de la Cornisa, Centelles- Abric I, Castell de Villafamés and Peñón de Santo Espíritu. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Abrigo del Torico del Pudial
The Maestrazgo and the Bajo Aragón are among the emptiest parts of Spain, a country of limestone ridges, deep river gorges and villages that look as if they were poured into the hillside. Castellote, Molinos and Mas de las Matas are small stone towns in the Teruel province, with Romanesque and Gothic churches, narrow streets and houses with wooden balconies, set between the Guadalope river and the high ground of the Maestrazgo. The population is small and has been falling for decades, which means traffic is light and the landscape is close to how it has been for centuries.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Abrigo del Torico del Pudial is where the day begins. Next is Coveta de la Cornisa.
2. Coveta de la Cornisa
Morella is one of the most dramatic towns in Spain: a walled medieval city wrapped around a conical hill, with a castle on the summit and its walls running unbroken around the base. It stands in the mountains of the Ports in the north of Castellón province, at around a thousand metres, and its silhouette, seen from the roads that climb toward it, is unforgettable. The Coveta de la Cornisa, the little cave of the ledge, lies in the hills about four kilometres away.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Coveta de la Cornisa comes up about 78 km into the recorded legs. Next is Centelles- Abric I.
3. Centelles- Abric I
Albocàsser and Catí are two quiet stone towns in the inland hills of Castellón, and between them, in a rocky ravine, the Centelles shelters hold some of the prehistoric paintings that make this corner of Spain a capital of Levantine rock art. The style is distinctive: small human figures, often archers, painted in red with long legs and dynamic poses, hunting deer, ibex and boar, sometimes in groups, sometimes in battle. The sites are part of the UNESCO listing of Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. Nearby, the Valltorta gorge, near Tírig, holds some of the most famous examples, and its museum explains the art and the people who made it.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 125 km into the recorded legs you reach Centelles- Abric I. Next is Castell de Villafamés.
4. Castell de Villafamés
Villafamés announces itself from a long way off: a village of white and ochre houses stacked up a hill of reddish rock, with the remains of a castle crowning the top. It stands a little inland from the coast of Castellón, roughly between Borriol, Cabanes and the beach town of Benicàssim, close enough to the sea that you can smell salt on a westerly breeze turning, yet already in that rumpled hill country that leads up into the Maestrat.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Castell de Villafamés, about halfway. Next is Peñón de Santo Espíritu.
5. Peñón de Santo Espíritu
Behind the orange groves of the Camp de Morvedre, a few kilometres inland from Sagunto, the land rises into the Sierra Calderona, a low range of pine woods, scrub and red sandstone that separates the coastal plain from the dry interior. The Peñón de Santo Espíritu is a rocky outcrop in these hills above the village of Gilet, and it carries prehistoric rock art in the Levantine tradition, the style of painted hunters, animals and human figures found in shelters along the Mediterranean side of Spain and listed by UNESCO as the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. The paintings are fragile and often protected, so do not expect to wander up and touch anything.