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.
From Albocàsser it runs 215 km to Albocàsser; allow about 4 h 38 of riding. The stops in between: La Covassa, Castell de Villafamés, Cova de Gargán and back through Castell de Villafamés. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Up in the dry limestone uplands of inland Castellón, the Valltorta and Gasulla ravines hold one of the densest concentrations of Levantine rock art in Spain, and the Coveta de Montegordo is one of its many small shelters. Painted under rock overhangs some seven or eight thousand years ago, perhaps more, the figures here are tiny, often no taller than a finger, yet astonishingly alive: archers running with bows drawn, goats and deer leaping, hunters following wounded animals. The whole region is part of the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin listing inscribed by UNESCO in 1998, and the famous Cova dels Cavalls in the Valltorta shows a deer hunt with a line of archers waiting in ambush.
Read the complete Coveta de montegordo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Coveta de montegordo is where the day begins. Next is La Covassa.
Culla sits on a narrow rocky crest in the Alt Maestrat, the inland highlands of Castellón, its houses wrapped around the remains of a castle that once controlled a large swathe of these mountains. The Knights Templar held it in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the village still has the feel of a lookout, with views in every direction over terraced slopes, stone walls and empty ridges. La Covassa, just below the village, is one of the many rock shelters in this part of Valencia that hold prehistoric paintings, part of the Mediterranean rock art group that UNESCO protects across eastern Spain.
Read the complete La Covassa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Covassa comes up about 31 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 63 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 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.
back through Castell de Villafamés sits at 127 km, about halfway. Next is back through La Covassa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Covassa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La Covassa comes up about 184 km into the recorded legs. Next is Coveta de montegordo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Coveta de montegordo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Coveta de montegordo closes the day.
Coveta de montegordo → La Covassa is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Covassa → Castell de Villafamés is 32 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 → 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 Covassa is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Covassa → Coveta de montegordo is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.