The cortijo is a farmhouse of the south, and the one that gives this shelter its name is probably nothing now but a few walls and a threshing floor on a hillside. The Cortijo de Sorbas II lies twelve kilometres from Letur and fourteen from Socovos, in the dry limestone country on the borders of Albacete and Murcia, where the Segura and its tributaries cut deep valleys. The painted shelters here, part of the Mediterranean rock art that UNESCO listed in 1998, are spread in the folds of the hills, and their exact locations are often kept quiet to protect them.
Sorbas is another name that stands out, because the better-known Sorbas is in Almería, with its gypsum karst and its caves. The Albacete one is a modest farm name, and it points to the way families moved across the south of Spain in search of land. What links them is the terrain. The countryside is limestone, and limestone means caves and overhangs, and where there are overhangs, people left their mark.
The riding between Letur and Socovos is pastoral. A narrow road follows a stream through a gorge, comes out on a high plateau of cereal fields and juniper, and then drops again to a village with a Moorish tower. Surfaces are patchy and you should expect the occasional farm vehicle, but there is almost no through traffic, and on a Tuesday in May you may feel you own the road. The seasons are sharp: pale yellow stubble in July, cold nights in October and the first snow on the ridges in December.
Fuel is a long way off. Moratalla, twenty-one kilometres away, is the nearest sizeable town, with petrol stations and a few restaurants, and Socovos, a village of nearly two thousand, may have a pump but is not worth relying on. If you stop in Socovos for lunch, expect plain, good country cooking. Carry water, because most of the springs on the map are dry in summer.