Autumn is the season for this part of Cuenca, when people with baskets disappear into the pine woods in search of mushrooms. Marmalo V is another of the painted shelters scattered around Villar del Humo, a village of fewer than four hundred people on the south-eastern flank of the Serranía de Cuenca, where the high plateau breaks into forested ridges and the Cabriel river gathers its strength. The ride takes in the church tower of San Martín in Teruel as well, a long way off but tied to this one by a thread of Spanish rock art and old villages, so think of this stop as one chapter in a longer story.
What strikes you here is the sheer quiet. Between the villages, the landscape is a deep green carpet of pine, with the occasional clearing for a field or a sheepfold. The road twists through woods and along ridges, with a surface that ranges from good to rough, and traffic is rare enough that a passing car is an event. The air smells of resin and warm needles. Three of the great rivers of Spain, the Tagus, the Júcar and the Cabriel, rise within a day's ride of each other in these uplands, and the water you cross here is on its way to either the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, depending on which valley it chooses.
With so few people about, fuel and food need planning. Villar del Humo and Carboneras de Guadazaón, which has nearly a thousand inhabitants, offer little beyond a shop and a bar, so it makes sense to fill the tank in a larger town before you arrive. Mornings are often cold even in summer, and snow falls in winter, sometimes enough to close minor roads. The wild boar are numerous, so watch for them at dusk, and in the villages the hunting season is a serious matter.
The shelters are reached on short walks, and the paintings of hunters and animals are small, delicate and easily missed. Go slowly, look at the shapes in the rock, and give the place a little silence. It is not a landscape that shouts; it asks you to lean in.