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: 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.
514 km from Albocàsser to Albocàsser, about 14 h 11 of riding. On the way it passes La Roca del migdia, Castell de Villafamés, Cova de Gargán and La Joquera. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
In 2018, UNESCO added the art of dry stone walling to its list of the intangible heritage of humanity, a joint listing by Spain and several other countries. Anyone who has ridden the lanes around Albocàsser will understand why. Every slope is stepped with terraces, every field is edged with a wall, and the walls, built without a speck of mortar, have stood for centuries. Small huts with corbelled roofs, called barraques in Valencian, shelter farmers from sun and rain. It is a vast, unsigned work of art, made by thousands of people over hundreds of years, and the hillsides would wash away without it.
Read the complete Cingle de l'Ermità -Abric I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cingle de l'Ermità -Abric I is where the day begins. Next is La Roca del migdia.
The inland hills of Castellón are some of the emptiest in eastern Spain. Behind the orange groves and resorts of the coast the land rises into the Maestrat, a high, stony country of plateaus, gorges and stone-walled fields, where villages of a few hundred people cluster around fortified churches and the horizon is crowned by the bulk of Penyagolosa, nearly 1,800 metres high. Villafranca del Cid, Culla and Benassal lie in this landscape, and the Roca del Migdia, the Noon Rock, is a shelter in a limestone face that was painted in prehistory.
Read the complete La Roca del migdia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Roca del migdia comes up about 64 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Read the complete Castell de Villafamés write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 157 km into the recorded legs you reach Castell de Villafamés. Next is Cova de Gargán.
High in the interior of Castellón, where the coastal orange groves are long forgotten and the land climbs toward the Penyagolosa massif, the shelter known as Cova de Gargán sits in a country of limestone ledges, holm oak and dry-stone terraces. Vistabella del Maestrazgo is the nearest village, a handful of kilometres away on its high plateau, with Villahermosa del Río down in its valley to the other side and Lucena del Cid a little further south. It is quiet up here in a way that the coast never is.
Read the complete Cova de Gargán write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cova de Gargán, about halfway. Next is La Joquera.
Just behind Castelló de la Plana, where the coastal plain meets the first hills, the ravine of La Joquera cuts into the limestone near the village of Borriol. Its shelters hold prehistoric paintings, part of the UNESCO-listed rock art of the Mediterranean basin, and the area has been studied for its archaeology for decades. It is unusual to find such ancient art so close to a large modern city, and the contrast between the busy plain below, with its orange groves, factories and motorways, and the quiet hills above is striking.
Read the complete La Joquera write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Joquera sits at 155 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cova de Gargán.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cova de Gargán write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cova de Gargán comes up about 311 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Castell de Villafamés.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castell de Villafamés write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 354 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Castell de Villafamés. Next is back through La Roca del migdia.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Roca del migdia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La Roca del migdia, late in the day. Next is Cingle de l'Ermità -Abric I.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cingle de l'Ermità -Abric I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 514 km.
Cingle de l'Ermità -Abric I → La Roca del migdia is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Roca del migdia → Castell de Villafamés is 93 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Castell de Villafamés → Cova de Gargán is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cova de Gargán → La Joquera is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Joquera → back through Cova de Gargán is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cova de Gargán → back through Castell de Villafamés is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Castell de Villafamés → back through La Roca del migdia is 86 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Roca del migdia → Cingle de l'Ermità -Abric I is 74 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.