CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Nerpio it runs 438 km to Nerpio; allow about 7 h 34 of riding. On the way it passes Cavidad V, Las Covachicas, Cavidad VI and Tenada de Cueva moreno. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,400 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Canalejas de Abajo is a name on the map rather than a place with a church and a bar: a scattering of farms and old cortijos in the upper valley of the Taibilla river, south of Nerpio, in the mountains where Albacete, Jaén and Granada meet. The Sierra de Segura and the Sierra de las Cabras rise all around, high limestone country cut by deep valleys, and the region is known among archaeologists for its painted rock shelters. The Abrigo del Sabinar and others along the same valley hold some of the most important prehistoric paintings of the Spanish south east, drawn on the soft overhangs that the river and the wind have shaped.
Read the complete Canalejas de Abajo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Canalejas de Abajo is where the day begins. Next is Cavidad V.
Nerpio is about as far from anywhere as you can get in mainland Spain. This village of around sixteen hundred people sits in the Sierra del Segura, in the far south-west of Albacete province, close to the borders of Murcia and Andalusia, and the surrounding hills are dotted with shelters containing prehistoric paintings. The numbered sites around here, Cavidad V among them, are part of the UNESCO-listed Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin, and the Nerpio area is one of the richest concentrations of Levantine art in Spain, with hunting scenes, archers and animals painted thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Cavidad V write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cavidad V comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Las Covachicas.
The Sierra del Segura, in the far south of Albacete province, is a world of its own: deep valleys, rivers lined with poplars, terraces of olive and almond trees, and white villages that look more Andalusian than Castilian. Letur is one of the most beautiful, a village of Moorish origin built on a rock above a stream, with narrow alleys, arches and gardens watered by old irrigation channels. Las Covachicas, a group of shelters, lies in the hills nearby, between Letur, Socovos and Férez.
Read the complete Las Covachicas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 112 km into the recorded legs you reach Las Covachicas. Next is Cavidad VI.
Nerpio is a village of sixteen hundred people at more than a thousand metres in south-west Albacete, and the area is among the richest in Spain for prehistoric painting. The shelter at Cavidad VI is one of dozens, in the Levantine tradition protected by UNESCO as part of the Mediterranean rock art of Spain, and the ride links it with a site called Las Cazuelas, the Cooking Pots, and a cave named for a Gypsy, Cueva del Gitano, a name that probably recalls a squatter or a shepherd rather than any famous event. The label Cavidad, meaning a cavity, tells you something about the people who numbered these places. They were archaeologists with a long list of holes in the rock.
Read the complete Cavidad VI write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cavidad VI, about halfway. Next is Tenada de Cueva moreno.
A tenada is a farm shed for livestock, the kind of low stone building that marks old transhumance routes, and the cave that goes with it is a local hollow in the limestone near Letur and Socovos in the south of Albacete province. This is the dry, hilly outer edge of the Sierra del Segura, where the pine woods give way to open scrub and cereal fields, and the horizon is a series of pale ridges. The label also links to the Letreros de los Mártires, a set of painted marks in a nearby shelter, which hints at the density of prehistoric art in this district.
Read the complete Tenada de Cueva moreno write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tenada de Cueva moreno sits at 221 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cavidad VI.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cavidad VI write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cavidad VI comes up about 272 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Las Covachicas.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Las Covachicas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 323 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Las Covachicas. Next is back through Cavidad V.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cavidad V write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cavidad V, late in the day. Next is Canalejas de Abajo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Canalejas de Abajo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 438 km.
Canalejas de Abajo → Cavidad V is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cavidad V → Las Covachicas is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Las Covachicas → Cavidad VI is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cavidad VI → Tenada de Cueva moreno is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tenada de Cueva moreno → back through Cavidad VI is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cavidad VI → back through Las Covachicas is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Las Covachicas → back through Cavidad V is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cavidad V → Canalejas de Abajo is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.