Cova Jeroni belongs to that quiet tangle of valleys behind Pego and Dénia where the Marina Alta hides its oldest stories. The shelters in this part of Alicante, along the ravines of Famorca, Ebo and Gallinera, carry some of the finest prehistoric art in eastern Spain, and they are listed together with hundreds of others as the rock art of the Mediterranean Basin. Do not expect a visitor centre and a car park; expect a dirt track, a short walk, a rock overhang and a few ochre figures that reward a long look.
The drive in is half the point. From Pego, the road up to the Vall d'Ebo climbs a steep wall of limestone in a staircase of hairpins, with the rice fields and marshes of the Pego-Oliva wetland spread out below towards the sea. It is narrow, the surface is fair, and the views are wide enough to make you forget the next corner, which you must not. Once over the top, the valley opens into a high basin of olive and almond terraces with Vall d'Ebo at the centre, a village of a few hundred people with a bar on the square and a cave nearby, the Cova del Rull, full of stalactites.
Beyond the village, the Barranc de l'Infern cuts down towards the Vall de Laguar. It is one of the great walks of the region, thousands of old stone steps built by the Moors to link their mountain villages, and it gives a sense of how densely these empty valleys were once farmed. The Moriscos were expelled in 1609 and many villages never recovered their population, which is why the terraces now run up the hillsides with nobody to tend them.
The nearer villages of Adsubia and Villalonga are small; Pego is your place for fuel and for a proper lunch, a town of around eleven thousand with a lively centre and good arròs, the local rice dishes, cooked properly in a flat pan. In spring the air smells of orange blossom down in the plain and of rosemary and thyme up in the valleys.
Avoid the hottest months if you can. In winter the light is clear and gold, the roads are empty on weekdays, and the only traffic up the hairpins is a farmer in a battered pick-up who will wave you past.