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.
A 279 km round trip from Velez Rubio - roughly 4 h 16 in the saddle. It goes by way of Cueva de la Plata, Cueva de la Higuera and back through Cueva de la Plata. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Cueva de la Plata.
Aledo is a tiny village on a rocky spur in the hills of Murcia, a place that punches well above its weight in history. In the eleventh century, it was a fortress on the frontier between Christian Castile and the Muslim taifa kingdoms, and the siege of Aledo in 1088 was a major episode in the struggle for the peninsula. A tower still stands above the village. The Cueva de la Plata, the silver cave, lies in the hills nearby, between Aledo, Totana and Alhama de Murcia.
Read the complete Cueva de la Plata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cueva de la Plata comes up about 80 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cueva de la Higuera.
Mazarrón has always been about what lies under the ground. Roman miners dug silver and lead from these dry hills, and later generations extracted alum and ochre, and the coast near the town still shows the scars and the rust-coloured earth of that trade. Two Phoenician ships from about the seventh century BC were found wrecked on the nearby shore, an astonishing find for archaeologists. The Cueva de la Higuera lies inland from the coast in the arid hills of the Región de Murcia, and its name means the cave of the fig tree, a small mark of green in a very dry place.
Read the complete Cueva de la Higuera write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 141 km into the recorded legs you reach Cueva de la Higuera. Next is back through Cueva de la Plata.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cueva de la Plata write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cueva de la Plata, late in the day. Next is Hoyos II.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hoyos II write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Hoyos II. That is the ride.
Hoyos II → Cueva de la Plata is 80 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Cueva de la Plata → Cueva de la Higuera is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cueva de la Higuera → back through Cueva de la Plata is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cueva de la Plata → Hoyos II is 79 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.