A hornacina is a niche, a small hollow in a wall, the kind you find in a church for a statue. The Hornacina de la Pareja, the niche of the couple, is a small shelter near Nerpio, a kilometre and a half from the village, and the name suggests that someone once saw a pair of figures in the paint. You should treat that as a clue to how fragile and ambiguous these images are: a couple to one eye, a stain and a couple of lines to another.
Small shelters like this make up most of the Levantine art in this part of Spain. Not every site is a gallery, and many are merely a little overhang where a few figures were painted, perhaps by a hunter on a single visit. Seen in that light, the Nerpio district is less a museum than a record of lives, with thousands of small acts of painting scattered across a landscape.
The ride in is the same as for the neighbouring shelters, with a quiet climb from Yeste or Moratalla on roads that wind through pine and juniper. The surface is fine, the bends are gentle, and the air at a thousand metres is fresh. Watch for ice in winter, and for sheep and tractors at any time.
For fuel, Yeste is about twenty-four kilometres away, and Moratalla farther. Nerpio has bars and a few rooms, but no sure pump. Take water, wear good shoes, and try not to leave any trace of your visit.
There is a lesson in the modesty of these places. A few red lines under a ledge of rock, no bigger than a hand, can take longer to read than a vast mural, because you have to supply the rest: the person who stood here, the day of the week, the reason for stopping. Standing in front of one in the thin mountain air, with a kestrel working the slope below and the village bell carrying faintly up the valley, you find that the gap in time is smaller than you thought. Give it ten quiet minutes before you take out the phone. On the way back, the road from Nerpio drops into the valley in a long series of open bends, and the light at the end of the afternoon is the best you will see all day. Ride it slowly, with the sun at your back, and stop at the first bar in the next village for something cold.