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.
293 km from Calasparra to Calasparra, about 4 h 54 of riding. On the way it passes Abrigo de Zaén I, Abrigo del mojao and back through Abrigo de Zaén I. 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.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Los Rumíes
The name Los Rumíes looks like the Arabic word rumi, which was once used across the Muslim world for Romans, then for Christians, and the Spanish landscape is full of names like it, left behind by eight centuries of Andalusi presence. The place lies in the dry hills north of the Segura valley, near Calasparra, and the rides that visit it also pass through the wider district of the Abrigo Grande de Minateda, one of the most famous painted shelters in the whole Levantine tradition. The rock art of this corner of Spain is substantial and varied.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Los Rumíes is where the day begins. Next is Abrigo de Zaén I.
2. Abrigo de Zaén I
Zaén is a name that appears on maps of the Sierra de Segura and the Sierra del Taibilla as a small valley with a few farms, and the shelter here is one of the painted caves of the Albacete interior. The area, wild and thinly populated, lies between Letur, Socovos and Férez, in the country drained by the Mundo river. This is the Spain of the unfashionable inland, where roads are quiet, villages are small and the hills are covered with pine and juniper. The paintings belong to the Mediterranean-arc group UNESCO listed in 1998, and the nearby Letreros de los Mártires, mentioned in the ride titles, belongs to the same tradition.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Abrigo de Zaén I comes up about 77 km into the recorded legs. Next is Abrigo del mojao.
3. Abrigo del mojao
Sometimes a name on a map is all you have, and this is one of those places. The Abrigo del Mojao belongs to the cluster of painted rock shelters in the high north-east of Almería, in the sierra country that spills across towards Murcia, and it sits some sixteen kilometres from the nearest village of any size. The shelters here are part of the Mediterranean Basin rock art tradition that UNESCO recognised in 1998, and their paintings are usually schematic, simple red signs and figures drawn by people who lived in this dry upland thousands of years ago.