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 362 km round trip from Teruel - roughly 6 h 10 in the saddle. The stops in between: Abrigo de los Dos Caballos, Castellón de los machos, Barrio del Castillo and back through Castellón de los machos. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The first thing to know about Teruel is that it is cold. At about nine hundred metres on a high, bare plateau of eastern Spain, it has a reputation as one of the chilliest provincial capitals in the country, and in the winter of 1937 and 1938 the bitter weather turned the battle of Teruel, one of the bloodiest of the Civil War, into a freezing ordeal. The town is also one of the loveliest in Aragón, famous for its Mudéjar towers, brick-and-tile belfries built by Muslim craftsmen working for Christian patrons in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and listed by UNESCO. The ride starts at one of them, the label Torre simply meaning the tower, and then heads out to the Ceja de Piezarrodilla and the Peña del Castellar, where rock art is found in the hills outside the city.
Read the complete Torre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Torre is where the day begins. Next is Abrigo de los Dos Caballos.
Red rock and green pine make an unusual pair in Spain, and Albarracín has built a landscape out of it. The hills west of the town are the Pinares de Rodeno, a protected area where rodeno sandstone, a rusty red, has weathered into rounded boulders and little overhangs under a cover of pines. Those overhangs, sheltered from rain and wind, are where prehistoric painters did their work, and the Abrigo de los Dos Caballos is one of the shelters the Albarracín area is known for. The paintings belong to the Levantine tradition, part of the group inscribed by UNESCO in 1998, and they show animals, hunters and humans in rust-red pigment on the sandstone.
Read the complete Abrigo de los Dos Caballos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abrigo de los Dos Caballos comes up about 43 km into the recorded legs. Next is Castellón de los machos.
High in the Serranía de Cuenca, among pine woods and sandstone outcrops near the village of Villar del Humo, prehistoric hunters painted figures on the rock shelters thousands of years ago. The site called Castellón de los Machos is one of a cluster in this area that belongs to the vast UNESCO listing of rock art of the Mediterranean Basin of the Iberian Peninsula, which covers hundreds of painted shelters from Catalonia to Andalusia. The images here are small, reddish and stylised, and finding them takes patience and good eyes.
Read the complete Castellón de los machos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 118 km into the recorded legs you reach Castellón de los machos. Next is Barrio del Castillo.
Cuenca is built on a spur of rock between two gorges, and the Barrio del Castillo is its highest quarter, the old castle district at the narrow tip of the ridge. The Huécar river runs along one side and the Júcar along the other, each in a deep cleft with limestone cliffs, and the old town clings to the top between them like a ship's prow. The castle that gave the quarter its name has largely gone, though a gate and a few walls remain, and the Torre de Mangana, a clock tower that was once part of the fortress, stands nearby. The whole walled town is on the UNESCO list as an unusual example of a medieval fortress city that kept its shape.
Read the complete Barrio del Castillo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Barrio del Castillo, about halfway. Next is back through Castellón de los machos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castellón de los machos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Castellón de los machos sits at 222 km, about halfway. Next is back through Abrigo de los Dos Caballos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abrigo de los Dos Caballos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Abrigo de los Dos Caballos comes up about 320 km into the recorded legs. Next is Torre.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Torre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Torre closes the day.
Torre → Abrigo de los Dos Caballos is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abrigo de los Dos Caballos → Castellón de los machos is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Castellón de los machos → Barrio del Castillo is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Barrio del Castillo → back through Castellón de los machos is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Castellón de los machos → back through Abrigo de los Dos Caballos is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Abrigo de los Dos Caballos → Torre is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.