Few countries have as many painted rock shelters per square kilometre as eastern Spain, and the stretch between Tàrbena, Vall d'Ebo and Pego is one of its richest zones. The Barranc de la Cova Jeroni is a dry ravine in these hills, and the shelter listed as Abric I is the first of several that archaeologists number along it. It sits less than six kilometres from Vall d'Ebo, a village of about three hundred and fifty people, and nine from Pego. The neighbouring Penya Escrita, which appears on the same route, is a rock face covered in painted signs of the schematic style that came later than the Levantine figures.
Think of the geography. These are the outermost ridges of the Betic mountains, which run from here all the way to Cádiz, and they are made of the same pale limestone as the Costa Blanca cliffs. Rain falls rarely but hard, and the ravines fill and empty in a few hours. That is why the roads follow the ridgelines and cross the valleys in sharp zigzags, an arrangement that every motorcyclist is going to love. The road from Tàrbena over to the coast through the Coll de Rates is perhaps the best-known of them, a climb that cyclists treat as a pilgrimage and where you should expect to share the bends with them.
The shelter walls are fragile, and the sensible approach is to treat them as the end of a short walk, not a place to touch. Bring water, a hat, and boots. The vegetation is pine, rosemary, thyme and dwarf palm, and in spring the scent is strong enough to notice through a helmet visor.
For practicalities, Vall d'Ebo and the villages nearby are tiny and fuel is best taken in Pego or in the coastal towns. Pego has a market, plenty of bars, and a local speciality of rice cooked in the wetland style. The marsh nearby, the Marjal de Pego-Oliva, is a natural park with herons, ducks and reeds, and it makes a curious contrast with the dry hills above.