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.
A 152 km round trip from María - roughly 2 h 37 in the saddle. On the way it passes Panal, Abrigo de los Gavilanes, Hoyos II and back through Abrigo de los Gavilanes. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Cueva Ambrosio belongs to the high, empty north of Almería province, on the dry plateau where Andalusia runs into Murcia, fifteen or so kilometres out of Vélez-Blanco. This is a landscape of broad, pale fields, almond and cereal farms, low limestone ridges and long skylines, with the pines of the Sierra María to the south and almost nothing built on the horizon.
Read the complete Cueva Ambrosio write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cueva Ambrosio is where the day begins. Next is Panal.
The north of Almería province is a different Spain from the sunburnt beach coast to the south. Here, around Vélez-Blanco and Vélez-Rubio, the land lifts to a high, cold plateau of almonds, cereal and pine woods, and the Sierra María-Los Vélez natural park rises above it, a rough limestone ridge with its summit above two thousand metres. Panal is a rock shelter in those hills, a short distance from Vélez-Blanco, and it belongs to the group of paintings recognised by UNESCO as the Mediterranean Basin rock art. Here the paintings are of the schematic kind, simple red signs and figures, rather than the lively hunting scenes found further north.
Read the complete Panal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Panal comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. Next is Abrigo de los Gavilanes.
Gavilanes means sparrowhawks, and the name fits a shelter high on a limestone face above the dry country where Murcia meets Almería. The Abrigo de los Gavilanes lies in the hills west of Lorca, in an area scattered with painted shelters such as the Collado de la Cruz and Los Grajos, the jackdaws, and it is part of the World Heritage Site of Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. The figures are small, red and schematic, painted by communities who farmed and herded here thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Abrigo de los Gavilanes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 50 km into the recorded legs you reach Abrigo de los Gavilanes. Next is Hoyos II.
Above the whitewashed roofs of Vélez-Blanco stands one of the most unexpected castles in Spain. It was built in the early sixteenth century for the first Marquis of Los Vélez, Pedro Fajardo, on a rocky spur, with a severe Gothic exterior and a Renaissance courtyard of astonishing delicacy inside. In the early twentieth century the owners sold the marble courtyard, which was taken down stone by stone and shipped abroad, and it now stands, reassembled, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A later restoration left the castle itself with plain rooms, but it remains a splendid sight from the road.
Read the complete Hoyos II write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hoyos II, about halfway. Next is back through Abrigo de los Gavilanes.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abrigo de los Gavilanes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Abrigo de los Gavilanes sits at 101 km, about halfway. Next is back through Panal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Panal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Panal comes up about 127 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cueva Ambrosio.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cueva Ambrosio write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cueva Ambrosio closes the day.
Cueva Ambrosio → Panal is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Panal → Abrigo de los Gavilanes is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abrigo de los Gavilanes → Hoyos II is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hoyos II → back through Abrigo de los Gavilanes is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Abrigo de los Gavilanes → back through Panal is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Panal → Cueva Ambrosio is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.