If you are in Moratalla in Holy Week, you will hear it from far off: the drums. The town's tamborada, in which hundreds of people in tunics beat their drums in unison through the streets, is one of the most distinctive Easter traditions in Murcia, and it gives this stony, high country a pulse that outsiders do not expect. Benizar is a small hamlet in the municipality, eleven or twelve kilometres from the town, and the shelter lies in the broken hills near Socovos, where the border between Murcia and Albacete wanders across ridges and dry ravines.
This is the north-west corner of the Region of Murcia, a part that most visitors skip on the way to the beaches, and it is a joy to ride. The road from Moratalla towards Socovos undulates through pine and holm oak, with the Segura river somewhere out of sight, and the bends are long, smooth and mostly empty. The surface is generally fine, and you can go hours without seeing another motorcycle. Heat in summer is dry and hard, and in winter the high ground can be bitterly cold, so the shoulder seasons are best, and an early start is wise in August.
Moratalla has a castle on a crag over the town, a handsome old centre of steep streets, and a reputation in the region for solid country cooking, lamb above all. It is also the place to buy fuel, as Benizar and the other hamlets are too small for pumps. Socovos, seven kilometres off in Albacete, has fewer than two thousand people and will give you a bar and a coffee, while Férez, further north, is smaller still.
The shelter belongs to a wide scatter of rock art across the Segura uplands, where Levantine paintings in red sit near later schematic signs in similar overhangs. Most are small, many are fenced, and all of them depend on being left alone. Wear boots, bring more water than seems sensible, and keep your voice down; sound carries in these ravines, and goats and griffon vultures will tell you if you are making too much of it.