Sometimes a name on a map is all you have, and this is one of those places. The Abrigo del Mojao belongs to the cluster of painted rock shelters in the high north-east of Almería, in the sierra country that spills across towards Murcia, and it sits some sixteen kilometres from the nearest village of any size. The shelters here are part of the Mediterranean Basin rock art tradition that UNESCO recognised in 1998, and their paintings are usually schematic, simple red signs and figures drawn by people who lived in this dry upland thousands of years ago.
What I can describe is the setting. This is a thinly peopled high plateau, with cereal fields, almond terraces and open pine woods on the slopes, and with dry streambeds that fill only in storms. A stream called the Río Frío appears in the name of the other stop on the ride, and the altitude keeps the nights cold even in July. The air is dry, the sky is large and the silence is the kind that city riders find unsettling at first. Kestrels hang over the fields, and in spring the verges are bright with poppies.
The roads that reach it are quiet and often narrow, with a rough surface in places, sheep and farm machinery as the main traffic and long views to ranges that look blue in the afternoon. Bends are open and easy, and the climbs are gradual rather than steep, so this is a place for relaxed riding rather than speed. Winter brings frost and the occasional snowfall, and the high ground can be shut off for a day or two. Midsummer afternoons are hot and shadeless.
Services are scarce, so plan. Vélez-Blanco and Vélez-Rubio, about sixteen and nineteen kilometres away, are the closest real towns, and Vélez-Rubio has the fuel, supermarkets and a pharmacy. Fill up there, carry water and food, and tell someone your route. The best seasons are spring and early autumn.