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.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 497 km round trip from Mula - roughly 6 h in the saddle. On the way it passes Cueva de la Plata, Los Paradores, Abrigo de la fuente and Río frío. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Cejo Cortado I
Mula is a town in the heart of the Murcia region, built on the slopes of a hill crowned by a sixteenth-century castle, with an old quarter of narrow streets, noble houses and churches. Around it, a dry landscape of hills, ravines and badlands opens out, with orchards and olive groves along the river. The Cejo Cortado, a name meaning the cut brow, refers to a rocky escarpment with prehistoric shelters about seven kilometres from the town, between Mula, Albudeite and Ricote.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Cejo Cortado I is where the day begins. Next is Cueva de la Plata.
2. Cueva de la Plata
Aledo is a tiny village on a rocky spur in the hills of Murcia, a place that punches well above its weight in history. In the eleventh century, it was a fortress on the frontier between Christian Castile and the Muslim taifa kingdoms, and the siege of Aledo in 1088 was a major episode in the struggle for the peninsula. A tower still stands above the village. The Cueva de la Plata, the silver cave, lies in the hills nearby, between Aledo, Totana and Alhama de Murcia.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Cueva de la Plata comes up about 50 km into the recorded legs. Next is Los Paradores.
3. Los Paradores
The far north of Almería province is not the desert most people imagine. Around Vélez-Blanco and María the land rises into the Sierra de María-Los Vélez Natural Park, a range of limestone peaks with pine and holm oak forest, high plains of cereal and almond and villages that can see snow in winter. Los Paradores is one of the rock art sites in this area, part of the UNESCO listing of the Mediterranean Iberian rock art, and the region holds one of the most famous painted shelters in Spain, the Cueva de los Letreros, home of the Indalo, a stick figure holding an arc over its head that has become the symbol of Almería.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 111 km into the recorded legs you reach Los Paradores. Next is Abrigo de la fuente.
4. Abrigo de la fuente
Nerpio is about as remote as it gets in southern Spain: a village in the far south-west corner of Albacete province, deep in the Sierra del Segura, close to the borders of Andalucía and Murcia. It sits in the valley of the Taibilla river, surrounded by mountains, with terraced fields, walnut trees and pine forests on the slopes. The Abrigo de la Fuente, the shelter of the spring, lies in the hills about eleven kilometres from the village.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Abrigo de la fuente, about halfway. Next is Río frío.
5. Río frío
Cold water is a rare luxury in southern Spain, and a stream called Río Frío promises exactly that. It is a land of pine forests, limestone crags, deep river gorges and tiny villages, and the painted rock shelters scattered through these hills are part of the UNESCO listing of rock art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula.