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 116 km round trip from Teruel - roughly 2 h 32 in the saddle. It goes by way of Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas, Ceja de Piezarrodilla and back through Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,400 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Torre
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Torre is where the day begins. Next is Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas.
2. Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas
Red sandstone is the first thing you notice. Between Albarracín, Bezas and Gea de Albarracín the ground turns the colour of rust, broken into towers, corridors and rounded boulders under a dense cover of maritime pine. This is the Pinares de Rodeno, a protected landscape in the Sierra de Albarracín, and its overhangs shelter some of the best-known Levantine rock paintings in Aragon, including pale and red bulls that seem far too large for the shallow hollows that hold them. The Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas is one of these shelters, its name borrowed from the shepherds' pens, parideras, where ewes were brought to lamb under the rock.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ceja de Piezarrodilla.
3. Ceja de Piezarrodilla
The Ceja de Piezarrodilla is a rock shelter in the mountains of southern Teruel, near the village of Villel and the Rincón de Ademuz, a curious enclave of the Valencian region surrounded by Aragon and Castilla-La Mancha. Its paintings, part of the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin listing, include human figures and animals in the Levantine style, and they sit on the red sandstone that characterises this area. The landscape is rugged and dry, with pine forests, limestone cliffs and the valley of the Turia river, which flows south towards Valencia.