Camarasa is a small town beneath a big wall of water. The dam across the Noguera Pallaresa, built in the early twentieth century, holds back a long reservoir, the Pantà de Camarasa, in a dry, rocky corner of Lleida where the pre-Pyrenees fall toward the Ebro plain. The cliffs rise steep and ochre above the water, and in the folds of that rock, shelters hold painted scenes from long before there was a dam or even a town. The Balma del Pantà is one of the sites of the Levantine rock art of the Iberian Mediterranean, a tradition listed by UNESCO in 1998.
The place is dry and sunlit, and the scent is hot stone, rosemary and almond. Hawks and vultures circle on the thermals above the gorge, and kingfishers flick over the water. Balaguer, fifteen kilometres away, is the nearest sizeable town, with about seventeen thousand people, a good market and an old centre on the Segre river, and it is the place to buy fuel and a proper meal. Camarasa itself is small, with only a few hundred people.
Other sites in the area, such as Monderes and the Cova del Cogulló, belong to the same family. The cave at El Cogul, a short way south, is celebrated for its scene of women dancing around a male figure, one of the best-known compositions in the art, and it has a visitor centre. Check opening times and book ahead if you plan to go, as sites are small and numbers are controlled.
For riders, this is a lovely region of gorges and reservoirs. The C-13 along the Noguera Pallaresa follows the river through narrow limestone cuts, with tunnels and cliffs towering overhead, and farther north the gorge of Mont-rebei, on the Aragonese border, is spectacular. Traffic is light, except on summer weekends. Spring and autumn are best, and winter mornings can be icy in the shadow of the cliffs.