Not every deer on a cave wall is the same animal. The Abric del Ciervo, the Shelter of the Stag, is another of the small rock overhangs in the cliffs above the Júcar country west of Valencia, named for a painted deer that the first people to describe it picked out among the fainter marks. It belongs to the red Levantine art that UNESCO recognised in 1998 as part of the Mediterranean Basin group, and it sits a few kilometres from Millares and Dos Aguas, in a terrain of broken limestone and pine that rewards anyone who enjoys finding things the hard way.
The nearest sizeable village on the map is Alborache, on the road towards the Hoya de Buñol, and that direction is the interesting one for a day's plan. Buñol, a few kilometres further, is a quiet industrial town under a castle for eleven months of the year and then, on the last Wednesday of August, it hosts the Tomatina, in which tens of thousands of people throw ripe tomatoes at each other for an hour. It sounds like a joke and in fact has a long rulebook. Come on any other day and the town is a pleasant surprise, with a ravine park, a river and a bar serving a decent plate of paella.
The country between here and the coast is a patchwork of dry hills, citrus plantations in the lower valleys and pine woods higher up. Water has always been the currency, and the old irrigation channels, the acequias, still run beside the roads in places, which is why a village can be a green island amid ochre rock. Spring is a good moment, because the orange blossom drifts up the valleys on warm days and you can smell it from the saddle.
On two wheels the roads here are lively and quiet at once. They bend through the hills in long, steady curves and climb over small passes with a short run of tight corners at the top, and they are mostly well surfaced, though loose stones wash onto the carriageway after storms. Weekends bring a few cyclists and other riders from the city, but weekdays are almost empty. Fuel is a matter of planning rather than worry: the villages are tiny, while Chiva and Buñol have stations and supermarkets. Take water in summer, and be ready for the walk to the shelter, which is over uneven rock and best done in the cool hours of the morning.