The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
472 km from Letur to Letur, about 11 h 08 of riding. On the way it passes Canalejas de Abajo, Letreros de los mártires, Queso and maina. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,400 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. fuente del Sauco
The Fuente del Sauco is the elder-tree fountain, a small spring that gave its name to a shelter in the hills between Letur and Socovos in the south of Albacete. Water is the story of this country. The Mundo river rises not far to the west, at a spectacular spring in the Calar del Mundo near Riópar, where it bursts out of a cave in a series of waterfalls, and it flows through the gorges below Letur before joining the Segura. Along its banks, and in the cliffs above, ancient people sheltered and painted, and the Andragulla and other shelters here belong to the same tradition, part of the Mediterranean Basin rock art that UNESCO protects.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
fuente del Sauco is where the day begins. Next is Canalejas de Abajo.
2. Canalejas de Abajo
Canalejas de Abajo is a name on the map rather than a place with a church and a bar: a scattering of farms and old cortijos in the upper valley of the Taibilla river, south of Nerpio, in the mountains where Albacete, Jaén and Granada meet. The Sierra de Segura and the Sierra de las Cabras rise all around, high limestone country cut by deep valleys, and the region is known among archaeologists for its painted rock shelters. The Abrigo del Sabinar and others along the same valley hold some of the most important prehistoric paintings of the Spanish south east, drawn on the soft overhangs that the river and the wind have shaped.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Canalejas de Abajo comes up 51 km in. Next is Letreros de los mártires.
3. Letreros de los mártires
Out in the high north-east of Granada province, Huéscar feels a long way from the Alhambra and the beaches of the Costa Tropical. This is the altiplano, a broad upland of wheat fields, almond trees and pale badlands at around a thousand metres, ringed by mountains, with the great limestone hump of La Sagra rising to the north. The rock shelter called Letreros de los Mártires lies in this country, a dozen or so kilometres from the town.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
103 km in you reach Letreros de los mártires. Next is Queso.
4. Queso
The far north of Almería surprises people who think the province is all desert and greenhouses. Up here, around the villages of María and Vélez-Blanco, you are in the Sierra de María-Los Vélez natural park, a range of limestone mountains covered with pine and holm oak, with snow in winter and cool nights even in August. The site recorded on the map simply as Queso sits in the hills south of María, among the cluster of prehistoric shelters for which this corner of Andalusia is known.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Queso, about halfway. Next is maina.
5. maina
Maina is an obscure name on the map in the Murcian hills north-west of Totana, where the Sierra Espuña rises above the valley of the Guadalentín. It refers to a rock shelter or painted site in the dry limestone country, part of the cluster of prehistoric art sites around here included in the World Heritage listing of Levantine rock art. As with many such places, there is often little to see without a guide, but the landscape around it is worth the ride.