Valencian and Catalan have a way of naming places that is worth a moment. A cingle is a cliff band, an abric is a rock shelter, a racó is a corner or nook, a mas is a farmstead, a molí a mill, a font a spring. Put them together and you can read the landscape from the map: the Cingle de l'Ermità is the cliff of the hermit's chapel, and Abric II is the second of several shelters along it. It lies about six kilometres from Albocàsser, in the Alt Maestrat, and carries painted figures in the Levantine style that UNESCO protects with the rest of the Mediterranean rock art of the Iberian Peninsula.
The hermitage itself is a clue to the area's later history. Many of the Maestrat's high places were claimed by small chapels and hermitages, where a hermit lived and looked after the shrine, and where the neighbouring villages held a pilgrimage and picnic on a feast day. They are often at the foot of a cliff, beside a spring, and it is not by chance that the prehistoric painters chose such places too. The same cliffs and the same water have attracted people for ten thousand years.
Getting here is simple but slow. The lanes from Albocàsser are narrow, winding and sometimes rough, with plenty of blind bends, and they carry hardly any traffic. Gravel and loose stone gather in the corners, and in a few places the surface is patched with cement. Take it gently, ride in the morning when the light is clear, and expect to share the road with the odd farmer. Summer is hot, and the rock holds the heat into the evening, while winter can bring frost and fog to the ravines.
Albocàsser has fewer than fourteen hundred inhabitants and a couple of bars, and Catí and Les Coves de Vinromà are not much bigger. The sensible place for fuel and a meal is Alcalà de Xivert, on the plain, about nineteen kilometres away. Bring water, sun protection and a map or downloaded route, since mobile coverage in the ravines can be patchy.