Eglésia de Santa Maria and Corral de la Gascona starting at Bonansa
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
553 km
Riding-time estimate
10 h 26
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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.
553 km from Bonansa to Bonansa, about 10 h 26 of riding. On the way it passes Cueva de Revilla, Cueva Peña Miel I, El Remosillo and Corral de la Gascona. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Scenic road chapters
Pyrenees N260 Route
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 55 km this is Pyrenees N260 Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Chapter facts
Length
55 km
Named road
Pyrenees N260 Route
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Eglésia de Santa Maria
Nine Romanesque churches stand in the Vall de Boí, high in the Catalan Pyrenees, and together they make one of the most coherent medieval landscapes in Europe. They were built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in a style that came from Lombardy with masons who knew how to raise stone towers without much money. UNESCO inscribed the group in 2000, calling them outstanding examples of a distinctive Lombard-Catalan style in a remote mountain setting.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Eglésia de Santa Maria is where the day begins. Next is Cueva de Revilla.
2. Cueva de Revilla
Revilla is one of the most spectacularly placed hamlets in the Spanish Pyrenees, perched on a ledge above the Garganta de Escuaín, a deep gorge cut into the limestone of the Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park. It looks down into the canyon from a terrace of meadows, with the high peaks behind. The Cueva de Revilla is a cave in the cliffs near the hamlet, and the area between Bielsa, Plan and Boltaña is some of the wildest country in Aragón.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Cueva de Revilla comes up about 108 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cueva Peña Miel I.
3. Cueva Peña Miel I
The Sierra de Guara, in the province of Huesca, is a limestone range riddled with canyons, and the river Vero cuts one of the most beautiful of them, a deep, narrow gorge of grey and ochre cliffs where vultures nest and the water runs clear over pale stones. Along its walls, prehistoric people left paintings in dozens of rock shelters, and the Cueva Peña Miel I is one of them, part of the UNESCO listing of rock art of the Mediterranean Basin. The Río Vero Cultural Park protects the area, with an interpretation centre in Colungo and guided visits to some of the shelters.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 163 km into the recorded legs you reach Cueva Peña Miel I. Next is El Remosillo.
4. El Remosillo
If you ride north from Barbastro toward Graus, the Ésera river eventually forces its way through a ridge of limestone, and the result is the Congosto de Olvena, a short, deep gorge with the road squeezed between rock and water. Up on the cliffs around here are rock shelters with prehistoric paintings, and El Remosillo is one of the best known in this corner of Aragón, between Estadilla, Graus and Fonz.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
El Remosillo, about halfway. Next is Corral de la Gascona.
5. Corral de la Gascona
Alquézar is one of the most dramatic villages in Spain: a cluster of ochre houses piled on a rocky spur above the canyon of the Vero river, crowned by a castle and a collegiate church built on the site of a Moorish fortress. It lies at the southern edge of the Sierra de Guara, a limestone range in Aragon cut by deep canyons, and the area is famous across Europe for canyoning, with people abseiling, jumping and swimming through the narrow gorges in summer. The Corral de la Gascona is one of the rock-art sites in the Vero canyon and its surroundings, part of the UNESCO-listed rock art of the Mediterranean Basin.