Zona 9 is not a place name at all, just a number, and that is a clue to how much rock art there is around Nerpio. Archaeologists divided the district's cliffs and gullies into numbered zones to keep track of them, and the nine or so zones listed on these routes cluster about seven kilometres from the village, along a dry valley in the Sierra del Segura. The shelters there belong to the group UNESCO listed in 1998 as the rock art of the Mediterranean basin on the Iberian Peninsula. If you do not read Spanish the label will tell you nothing, so the landscape has to do the talking.
It does so quietly. The valley floor is a mix of cereal fields and fallow, with juniper and holm oak on the slopes, and cliffs of pale limestone rise above them in broken bands. Water is scarce in summer and the sky is huge. At night, with so little light pollution, the stars are some of the best in southern Spain, and the high plateau is increasingly used by amateur astronomers. A rider who stays in Nerpio for the night will find the sky worth ten minutes outside the front door.
The roads that lead here are slow and rewarding. From Yeste you climb the plateau on a road that shuffles through pine forest and past farmland, with frequent but not severe bends, and there is a run of about twenty kilometres where you may not meet another vehicle. The surface is generally fine but loose gravel is common at the edges. Temperatures vary: below freezing on winter mornings, thirty-five in July, and sharp winds in March and April.
Services need planning. If you are riding from the north, Yeste is closer to twenty-seven. Take water, a hat and a spare layer, and do not rely on your phone for navigation once you leave the village.