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.
282 km from Velez Rubio to Velez Rubio, about 4 h 16 of riding. It goes by way of Cueva de la Plata, Cueva de la Higuera and back through Cueva de la Plata. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 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. Colmenas
Vélez-Blanco is a white town under a limestone crag in the north of Almería province, with a Renaissance castle on the rock above it and the pine-covered Sierra María rising behind. The Colmenas label sits less than a kilometre away, in country of dry slopes, almond groves and scattered farms.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Colmenas 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 81 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cueva de la Higuera.
3. Cueva de la Higuera
Mazarrón has always been about what lies under the ground. Roman miners dug silver and lead from these dry hills, and later generations extracted alum and ochre, and the coast near the town still shows the scars and the rust-coloured earth of that trade. Two Phoenician ships from about the seventh century BC were found wrecked on the nearby shore, an astonishing find for archaeologists. The Cueva de la Higuera lies inland from the coast in the arid hills of the Región de Murcia, and its name means the cave of the fig tree, a small mark of green in a very dry place.