Barranc de Beniali, Abric III, is the third shelter catalogued along the ravine, five or six kilometres from Villalonga and Vall d'Ebo, and it belongs to the Mediterranean rock art that UNESCO listed in 1998. Its paintings, if you find them, are small and in dull reds.
The valley has a darker chapter. When the Moriscos were expelled from the kingdom of Valencia in 1609, the villages of the Vall de Gallinera and Vall d'Ebo lost almost their entire populations, and the Moorish terraces and irrigation channels had to be handed over to settlers from other regions. Some of the villages never fully recovered, and you can still read the history in the stone: mosque towers converted to bell towers, Arabic place names, and the neat, stepped fields that were built by people who knew how to move water.
Riders get the benefit of that engineering. The roads here follow the contours of the valleys in a long series of bends, and every village is a small knot of white houses and a church, with a bar in the square. Between them the land is a patchwork of cherry, almond and olive, with pine on the heights. The roads are narrow, with a good surface in most places and some rough patches after heavy rain, and the traffic is almost entirely local. Weekends in February and March are busier, when visitors come to see the blossom.
For fuel, Villalonga is a village of about four thousand and may have a pump, but the sure option is Pego, nine kilometres off, which also has supermarkets and a good market. Vall d'Ebo and Adsubia are tiny. A walk up to the shelter needs water and stout shoes, and a hat in the warmer months. In the villages, a plate of rice, a bowl of broad beans or a slice of coca, the local flatbread, makes a simple lunch.