South of Huesca the land opens out. The Pyrenees are behind you, a snowy line on a clear day, and ahead stretches the gently rolling cereal country that eventually turns into the dry steppes of Los Monegros. Forau del Cocho lies in this transitional landscape, between Torres de Barbués, Almuniente and the outskirts of Huesca itself, a place where the only relief is the occasional low ridge or gully cut into soft rock.
The name is Aragonese, and forau means a hole or a hollow. Painted and engraved rock sites in this lowland part of Aragón are rarer than in the mountains, which gives them a particular interest: they suggest the plain was used and crossed by prehistoric people who left marks in the few rocky outcrops available. Like the other sites grouped under UNESCO's Mediterranean rock art inscription, it is modest and protected. There is no visitor centre waiting for you; this is very much a quiet, specialist spot.
Riding in this part of Aragón is all about space and sky. The roads south and east of Huesca are long, straight or gently curving, crossing fields of wheat and barley, with irrigation canals and the occasional farm complex. They are good for covering ground and for watching the light change, less so for knee-down entertainment. The wind is the defining feature: the cierzo, the dry northwesterly, can blow hard for days and makes riding on exposed roads tiring. Summer is very hot; winter mornings can bring thick fog in the valleys.
Huesca, around eleven kilometres away, is where to get fuel, food and anything else. If you are using this as a start or finish point, the city makes an easy base with plenty of places to stay. From here you can head north to the Sierra de Guara for proper twisting roads, west to the dramatic red cliffs of the Mallos de Riglos, or east into the Monegros, where the landscape becomes almost desert-like and roads run for kilometres without a village. Each direction has its own personality, and the plain around Forau del Cocho is the hinge between them.