You reach La Coquinera through some of the emptiest country in Spain. The rock shelter lies in the hills of the Río Martín Cultural Park, in the triangle between Oliete, Estercuel and Alacón, where the Martín river and its side ravines have sliced the Teruel plateau into terraces, cliffs and narrow gorges. The paintings here belong to the same Mediterranean tradition as the dozens of other panels in the park, figures of animals and people in ochre red, small enough that you have to stand close and let your eyes adjust before they emerge from the stone.
What strikes most visitors is the silence. The villages are tiny, a few hundred people each, many of them older, and the houses are built of the same honey coloured stone as the cliffs. Estercuel has a monastery, El Olivar, set among olive trees a short way outside the village, and Oliete sits on a bend of the river where poplars and vegetable plots make a green thread through the dry hills. The rocks around here are layered like the pages of a book, sediments laid down in ancient seas, and fossils are not rare on the tracks. Griffon vultures nest on the canyon walls, and you will often see a dozen circling at once.
For a rider the joy is the road network itself: narrow, winding, almost traffic free, rising from the river onto bare plateaus where the horizon opens in every direction and then plunging back down in a series of hairpins. Surfaces are mostly fine but patchy, and loose stones gather where farm tracks join. The cierzo wind can push hard on the exposed tops. Spring and autumn are perfect; July and August are blisteringly hot by noon, and in winter the plateau frosts over at night. Access to the shelter is on foot over a rough path, and the panels are usually fenced, with guided visits organised through the park.