Shelters collect names the way villages collect nicknames. The Abrigo del Ídolo lies barely a kilometre and a half from Nerpio, and it carries the name of a figure that someone once thought looked like an idol, which tells you less about the figure than about the person who named it. Across the district you will find shelters called after mills, springs, farms and the families who worked them, and the whole collection reads like a gazetteer of the people who walked these hills before the archaeologists arrived.
Nerpio itself sits on a high plateau of the Sierra del Segura, at about a thousand metres, and the approach from Yeste or Moratalla is a long climb through pine and juniper to open farmland. The roads are good, quiet and winding, and the corners wide enough to enjoy at a gentle pace. In winter, ice and snow can close the higher sections, and in summer the afternoons are dry and bright. The most comfortable months are May, June, September and October.
What makes Nerpio special is that the shelters are close to the village and to each other. Within a few kilometres there are many painted walls, some Levantine, with red hunters and animals, others schematic, with abstract signs, and walking between them is like leafing through a book whose pages are cliffs. Some are fenced and some are easy to miss, and a local guide or the tourist office in the village will save you time.
Fuel is not something to count on in Nerpio. Yeste, twenty-four kilometres away, is the nearest sizeable village with services, and Moratalla, farther off, has more. The village has bars where you can eat well and cheaply, and the water in the fountains is cold and good. Take care at the shelters, wear boots, and let the paintings be.