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 235 km round trip from Teruel - roughly 5 h 23 in the saddle. The stops in between: Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas, Ceja de Piezarrodilla, Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad and Cerrada del Tío Jorge. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,400 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
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 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.
Read the complete Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Read the complete Ceja de Piezarrodilla write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 61 km into the recorded legs you reach Ceja de Piezarrodilla. Next is Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad.
Albarracín is the town every Spaniard has a photograph of, and with good reason. Its pink-ochre walls climb a rocky spur above a bend in the Guadalaviar river, a medieval fortress-town whose streets are so narrow and steep that cars were long ago banished from the old quarter. Not far off, the Pinares de Rodeno, a forest of pines growing on red sandstone, hides dozens of shelters with prehistoric paintings, also on the World Heritage list. The paridera of the label is a shepherd's stone pen, a humble relic of a pastoral world that endured in these hills for centuries.
Read the complete Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad, about halfway. Next is Cerrada del Tío Jorge.
A cerrada, in the dry uplands of Teruel and Cuenca, is a place where the land closes in: a narrow gorge, a pinch in the valley wall, the sort of spot where a shepherd could shut a flock in for the night and be done. Tío Jorge, Uncle George, is one of those anonymous local names that outlast any record of who he was.
Read the complete Cerrada del Tío Jorge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cerrada del Tío Jorge sits at 77 km, about halfway. Next is back through Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad comes up about 145 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Ceja de Piezarrodilla.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ceja de Piezarrodilla write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 179 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Ceja de Piezarrodilla. Next is back through Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas, late in the day. 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.
The route ends here after 235 km.
Torre → Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas → Ceja de Piezarrodilla is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ceja de Piezarrodilla → Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad → Cerrada del Tío Jorge is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cerrada del Tío Jorge → back through Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Abrigo Contiguo a la Paridera de las Tajad → back through Ceja de Piezarrodilla is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ceja de Piezarrodilla → back through Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Abrigo de la Paridera de las Tajadas → Torre is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.