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.
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.
A 245 km round trip from Velez Rubio - roughly 6 h 12 in the saddle. It goes by way of Cueva Ambrosio, Abrigo de la fuente, Albrigo de Jutia I and back through Abrigo de la fuente. 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. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Hoyos II is where the day begins. Next is Cueva Ambrosio.
2. Cueva Ambrosio
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Cueva Ambrosio comes up 30 km in. Next is Abrigo de la fuente.
3. Abrigo de la fuente
Nerpio is about as remote as it gets in southern Spain: a village in the far south-west corner of Albacete province, deep in the Sierra del Segura, close to the borders of Andalucía and Murcia. It sits in the valley of the Taibilla river, surrounded by mountains, with terraced fields, walnut trees and pine forests on the slopes. The Abrigo de la Fuente, the shelter of the spring, lies in the hills about eleven kilometres from the village.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
59 km in you reach Abrigo de la fuente. Next is Albrigo de Jutia I.
4. Albrigo de Jutia I
Nerpio is about as far from anywhere as Spain gets. The village sits in the southern corner of the province of Albacete, where the Sierra de Segura and the mountains of Murcia and Granada meet, in a high valley cut by the Taibilla river. Around it, in the ravines and rock walls, are some of the most important prehistoric painted shelters in the country, and the Abrigo de Jutia is one of them. The Nerpio sites belong to the UNESCO-listed rock art of the Mediterranean Basin, and several of them, including the famous shelters of the Solana de las Covachas, show hunters, archers and animals painted in the Levantine style. Guided visits are organised from the village; ask locally about access and opening times, because the sites are protected and not all are open.