Out in the high north-east of Granada province, Huéscar feels a long way from the Alhambra and the beaches of the Costa Tropical. This is the altiplano, a broad upland of wheat fields, almond trees and pale badlands at around a thousand metres, ringed by mountains, with the great limestone hump of La Sagra rising to the north. The rock shelter called Letreros de los Mártires lies in this country, a dozen or so kilometres from the town.
Letreros, meaning signs or inscriptions, is a name that turns up across south-eastern Spain wherever shepherds found painted marks on rock and assumed someone had been writing. The paintings in this region are mostly schematic: stick-like human figures, animals, suns and zigzags in red ochre, made by farming and herding communities in late prehistory. They are part of the Mediterranean rock art group protected by UNESCO, and they are faint and small, so do not expect much from a glance. The real sense of the place comes from the setting, a great sweep of empty country where it is easy to imagine people tending flocks in exactly the same way.
Riding up here is wonderful if you like space. The roads across the altiplano between Huéscar, Galera, Orce and Castril are long, open and lightly trafficked, sweeping across plateaus and dropping into dramatic little river valleys lined with poplars. Toward La Sagra and the Sierra de Castril the tarmac narrows and climbs through pine forest. The surface varies from new to cracked and patched, and side winds can be strong on exposed stretches. This is a land of real extremes: summer afternoons are fierce, and winter mornings can be well below freezing.
Huéscar is the town to rely on for fuel, food and a bed, a market town of some eight thousand people with a solid main square. Galera, about twenty kilometres away, is worth a look for its cave houses dug into the clay hills, and nearby Orce is known for very ancient finds that put early humans in this basin over a million years ago. Coming here is a commitment of distance, but the reward is roads you will have almost to yourself.