Bicorp is a village of about six hundred people in the interior of Valencia province, and it is famous among archaeologists for the Cueva de la Araña, whose painting of a person climbing a rope to reach a wild bees' nest is one of the best-known images of Levantine art. The shelter marked Abrigo de Jesús Galdón is a few kilometres from Bicorp, in the same dry, rugged country of limestone ridges and pine, and it belongs to the same tradition. The honey-hunting scene is also part of the reason that this rock art is protected by UNESCO, which listed it in 1998.
The country around Bicorp is little visited and strangely empty. It sits between the Júcar and the Cabriel rivers, in a district of reservoirs, canyons and cork oaks, and its villages are spaced a long way apart. Quesa, six kilometres away, and Millares, farther on, are both small, and the road that connects them winds along valleys of almond and olive. The whole district has the feel of an area that people left, and you meet more goats than cars.
Roads here are narrow, curving and not always well marked. Some of the best are the minor ones that follow the rivers, with sections of fresh asphalt alternating with old patched surface, and you should be ready for gravel on the bends. In spring the hills are green, in summer they are brown and hot, and in autumn mushroom hunters appear in the pine woods. The sun is intense, and the rock walls hold the heat until after dark.
Fuel is the thing to plan. Bicorp, Quesa and Millares are tiny, and the nearest big town is Carlet, twenty-two kilometres off towards the plain, in the middle of the Ribera orange country. Fill the tank before you start and carry water, because the shelters are in dry country with no shade. Bicorp has a few bars, and a plate of rice with rabbit and snails, a local classic, is a satisfying way to end a day on the road.