Hi Spekkie, was good to meet up last week. I really enjoyed my little break in Aìnsa on my way back to “work”. Thanks to you and Mrs Spekkie for the hospitality, was much appreciated.

Glad to hear that you seem to have turned the corner on your planning woes and hopefully you’ll get your building licence pretty soon. It’s a stunning spot and what you described to me sounded incredible.

I hope to be back again to play out in the Pyrenees next year when you’ll hopefully be up and running.

For now, good luck!

Within a week of buying our property in Spain the ex mayor came down with a piece of string and sectioned off part of our land. He then asked us if we wanted to buy it.We thought ” old fool,he’s got it wrong “.
A couple of years later a woman turned up and told us to keep off her land.After much shouting and arguing we took our Escritura ( deeds) together with plans of the plot numbers registered to us,down to the Catastro( council land registry).
Turns out he had the section of land registered to him and then sold it.No explanation from the deeds office how he did it ,probably bribery,and it couldn’t be reversed unless 2 other neighbours took him to court.
He used to be the Mayor under the Franco regime and was despised by many people in the village as he stole land during that period.One of my neighbours was fearful of him.
The woman then fenced the land and said she would build smack in front of us.We had 2 visits from the Guardia after her complaints but eventually the ill feeling got too much and she abandoned the land.
The old guys son came to see us and said the woman will never return so we think that her money was returned.
The ex mayor is now in a nursing home and many in the village are glad to be rid of him.

Was a pleasure Potdog! Glad you enjoyed it. I’ve ridden, photographed and catalogued two more trails this last week – by the time you come back I’ll be able to show you the best of the best!

joeegg – thankfully nothing quite as bad as that in our situation. In fact our guys sound positively friendly by comparison!

What a weekend! Yesterday we spent the day picking grapes with Rosa & Ramon down in the vineyard, today we spent the day at the farmhouse sorting, stomping and pressing. Tomorrow we will pick again and Tuesday we should finish the last of the processing. Then the grape just must sit for a while 🙂

We’ve enjoyed it but I can tell you these old guys know how to do a hard days work. And all of it with a chat and a smile – as if it were no work at all.

We have heard from the Municipal Architect in Ainsa and he is happy with our house plans and the agreements we have with our neighbours regarding access to our property etc.

He has forwarded our file to the regional architects office in Huesca (the main town nearby) for final approval. . . . we might actually be getting there now!

🙂

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5 days of picking grapes, stomping grapes and eating grapes! All done now – yesterday we finished cleaning up. Now we wait a fortnight for the grape juice to ferment.

We were finished by lunchtime so I was able to get back out on the Zona Zero trails yesterday afternoon for a ride 🙂

Today we are going to look at cars in the nearest big town, Barbastro. After 6 months of residency in Spain you either have to buy a Spanish car or register your foreign car with Spanish plates. It’s quite expensive to do and for us, with a British car, there’s also some retro work to do because the headlights point the wrong way etc.

So, we’re looking for a four wheel drive SUV type vehicle with a tow-bar that will do us for day to day stuff initially but also be able to get us up the access roads in the mountains to the top of some of the climbs because we are going to offer “uplifting” to those of our visitors who “like to ride down but don’t always like riding up”. . . .

Personally I’m loving the climbing 🙂

Now that we’re heading into winter up here in the Northern Hemisphere (although it’s still lovely weather where we are in Spain) we spent some time at the weekend going through the barn that Ramon the friendly farmer is lending us to store our furniture and belongings in until our house is ready. We only expected having to use it for a few months in the Spring but of course all the delays have knocked that for six. Everything is still clean & tidy and well wrapped up though and we even dug a few more things out to use at the apartment in the meantime.

Today Ramon and I drained the 1600 litre, 200 year old wooden cask that he has in his cellar and that we’d filled with stomped grape juice two weeks ago. It’s finished fermenting and was ready to store. He has 4x 200 litre stainless steel tanks and an assortment of about a zillion old wine bottles that we’ve now filled and shelved. At the moment he still has about 400 litres of last years wine left to finish. By then the new stuff will be ready to go. It was hard work – because Ramon insisted on us both frequently testing the wine as we drained it out of the cask . . . . a tough job, but someone has to do it!

🙂

A few ups and downs here in Southern Cataluña. We have finished harvesting the almonds, mainly because the crop was very poor due to the very dry summer. Bizarrely only the trees that we didn’t get round to pruning bore fruit and getting the nuts involved scrabbling around in the tops with a net underneath to catch them as they fell. Normally it’s just a matter of picking them a shoulder height. We have to use our high tech machine to remove the shell, this is a process called shucking and you feed them into a hopper then a revolving paddle hits the shell until the nut falls out. This halves the weight that is saleable but at least the shells make good kindling for the fire.
We have had a new wood burner fitted to replace the totally inadequate one we inherited. Hopefully this will give us the output we need in the 2-3months when it’s chilly here.
Unfortunately our solar power setup has chosen to fall over just as we get into the shorter days, one of the battery calls has failed and we cannot just stick another one into the line as they are connected in series and need to be balanced. We have decided to bite the bullet and get an improved system which will more than double our storage capacity and with the price of solar panels very low at the moment, we are looking at double the output there as well.
We’ve asked local suppliers to quote but each has their own view on what will work so it’s taking a bit of sorting out.
The problem with this is that we will need to transfer a chunk of money into Euros and the exchange rate is killing us. We paid for the house just over a year ago with the rate at 1.43 and now it’s rapidly moving towards parity.
At least the sun is shining today and there’s a public holiday tomorrow. Rally Cataluña comes past here on Friday so will be off there on the bike.
Still planning to have a trip up north to see you Spekkie but need to get our power requirements sorted first

No rush – when you’re ready. Mrs PB can let me know on FB 🙂

We’re also looking at having a part solar system installed for the summertime.

Tomorrow is the Dia de Pilar I believe 🙂

Just had another guy come to talk about solar, even more confused now! You have to tread on eggshells so as not to appear either an easy touch or a know it all. All we want is a like for like quote but everyone has a different opinion as to what we need???
Forgot to say when you were talking about cars and tow bars, if the trailer is braked or carries over a certain weight, it will need to be “matriculated”
The 6 month thing on driving abroad seems very poorly policed, we have only just taken our camper van back to the UK to sell, we’ve been here just over a year. We know several people who have been driving UK registered cars here for years, they just take them back for MOT when it’s due.
Hope to see you soon.

Pretty sure you cannot insure a UK registered car in Spain and no UK insurer AFAIK will cover that kind of usage abroad.

If you drive a foreign registered vehicle without insurance in the UK for years I suppose that is not frowned upon.

If you drive a foreign registered vehicle without insurance in the UK for years I suppose that is not frowned upon.

It’s illegal, but without an agreement on information exchange with the foreign equivalent to the Association of British Insurers, the ANPR machine has no info to cross-reference.

Liberty Seguros will give you insurance for a UK registered car in Spain, or at least they used to, I used them when we moved over here.

Pretty sure you cannot insure a UK registered car in Spain and no UK insurer AFAIK will cover that kind of usage abroad.

You can insure a uk car abroad. You’ll have to get it back to the uk for its MOT once a year mind.

Home

The only problem might be local legislation. In Austria, after 3 months, the car has to be registered locally or they fine you.

Can give you the name of at least 3-4 brokers in spain who will happily sort out a UK car with insurance.
It’s big business.

On Friday morning we went into our local council office to check on the progress of our planning application. We were told that the regional architect in Huesca has approved our plans and they have been returned to the architect in Ainsa, who had approved them previously. Now the local council architect just needs to make sure that all of the paperwork is in place and sign it off. We are hoping that will happen this week . . . .

Meanwhile, on Friday afternoon I got a call from Angel, the man behind the whole Ainsa Zona-Zero MTB/Enduro project to see if I was free to help him with some trail work. I had been in and introduced myself to him at the bike shop a while ago – my intentions coming here were always to get involved and help out wherever I can – and he’d said that he’d start working on the trails in the autumn and was very keen to have any help. He’s a great guy, speaks a bit of English and is passionate about the trails.

We went out on Friday and again this afternoon creating a new single-track using an ancient sheep path through the forest . . . .

🙂

Finally !!!

We have been told that our planning application is fully approved and permission has been granted! We will receive the temporary “certificate of license” tomorrow by registered post and then the official certificate once we’ve paid the council their fee. (which is hopefully not to much!)

We can now go back to the bank – who agreed with our business plan “in principal” but could not proceed with our building loan application without the building license being issued.

#sighofrelief

Congratulations, sort of. Now you have to deal with builders, who are all sorts of fun to work with 🙂

Whether Spanish ones are worse than British ones is something I’m not qualified to comment on… just get decent local references and speak to the people who’ve worked with them. And make sure any contract has a penalty clause for going over time.

🙂

On trail building just curious as to who owns the land and what are the official access rules vs reality ?

Well done, you can get started legally now. Good builders and plumbers are worth paying extra for. I have been planning a bathroom refurb here and spent hours planning. The plumber came yesterday and in 5 mins came up with some really good ideas. He said 25 years experience you see a lot.

Good luck btw, I did not finish my letting season till last week so did not get up your way on the bike.

jambalaya – the trails are all on either “public” or council/government owned land or (occasionally) on private land with permission.

Zona Zero is a network of around 1000kms of trails, tar roads, paths, sheep track, jeep track, fire roads, access roads and singletrack.

Today after three afternoons of work Angel took me on a trail I haven’t done before and we finished with riding down our brand new single track back to the car. It was, as he said, Fantastico.

[video]https://youtu.be/Uz9YRDGBKd4[/video]

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That looks dandy.
Keep up the good work. 🙂

Zona Zero is a network of around 1000kms of trails, tar roads, paths, sheep track, jeep track, fire roads, access roads and singletrack.

Shamefully I have never been despite it being just 3-4h away. Haven’t got a MTB at the mo – is there stuff I can ride on a fat tyred roadbike?

Bob – Depending on your skill level and the fatness of your tyres . . . I’m sure there’s plenty.

[video]https://youtu.be/qNZJmTHP040[/video]

I think this quote from Angel at the end of the “MTB Zona Zero Documental” video sums up life here in Ainsa, Spain …

“If you see a stone that bothers you, you stop and you remove it, the same as everyone else”

A good way to get the bottom half of your car buffed up in Ainsa town!

[video]https://youtu.be/ednrvcjWwRk[/video]

Last week Angel (from Zona-Zero, Ainsa) and I checked out an old disused & overgrown path, around about 1.5km long, near the village of Torrelisa. He wanted to clean It up to provide an alternative downhill run on Route 7.

The first thing we did was walk the path to see how bad it was (it was bad!) and whether it could be turned back into a useable bike trail or not (It could).

Then this week we went back with tools and started work. Stage 1 consists of cutting and removing the biggest branches with the use of a chainsaw and clearing the bigger fallen rocks off the whole length of the path. Stage 2 sees us doing a second pass for the smaller bushes and branches with a petrol strimmer (weed-eater) and clearing away the debris and any smaller stones we missed the first time.

Today halfway down the path we discovered an old natural spring that riders can use for drinking water 🙂

These are some “Before/During” Pics on my Blog Page:

http://mtbainsa.tumblr.com/

🙂

Found an old stone suspension bridge just off “Route 6 Light” Zona Zero the other day. You would use it if the weir just upstream of here became submerged due to a high river water-level.

You can see here how wide the river bed is and it looks like it’s too wide. A few hours heavy rain up in the mountains though and this boulder strewn dry riverbed becomes a torrent . . .

🙂
[img]http://66.media.tumblr.com/df957c7fbdd719ed0d4ddc169d357861/tumblr_og9nhnCn411vj05k1o1_540.jpg[/img]

lovely

A few hours heavy rain up in the mountains though and this boulder strewn dry riverbed becomes a torrent . . .

Also during the “deshielo” in spring when all the snow melts… There are loads of “rivers” like that in central Spain, too.

We have our Building License! Finally. We went and signed for it today at the municipal architects office. Now we can move forward. What a relief . . . .

It is officially time to break out the champagne!

🙂

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Well done, definitely time to break out he bubbly.
We are slowly getting there as well. The new wood burner is working well, we’ve had a few chilly evenings lately and it sure pumps out a lot of heat. The upgraded solar installation happened last week, we’ve gone from 3 to 8 solar panels and doubled our battery capacity. We can also monitor performance on line and are learning the tech involved in optimising battery life and output. The last piece of the to do list is taking a bit more time. We found several rotten ceiling beams a few months ago and a local builder has been promising to renew them. He turned up a couple of weeks ago promising to deliver the beams within days to be painted prior to fitting, we are still waiting.
Had a lovely club ride on Sunday following a route which ran through an area where a big civil war battle took place, there were stone plaques every few hundred metres with tributes to the fallen Republican fighters. Need to do a bit of reading on local history.

Had a lovely club ride on Sunday following a route which ran through an area where a big civil war battle took place, there were stone plaques every few hundred metres with tributes to the fallen Republican fighters. Need to do a bit of reading on local history.

Presumably the Battle of the Ebro, I think you said you were in southern Catalonia. Last major battle of the Civil War and pretty much guaranteed that the Fascists would win…

Yes that’s the one Molgrim. We often ride past caves which were used as Republican hideouts and many buildings still have bullet marks. Strange to think that less than 80 years ago, hundreds of people died in these hills. The inscriptions on the stones looked fresh. There’s a museum in Corbera d’Ebre which we are planning to visit.

I’m going to post here more Often!
This afternoon 3 blokes turned up in a transit van with our long lost beams. The 6 metre lengths stuck out of the rear doors with a bit of rag tied on to pacify the mossos. We’ve now got to get as many coats of preservative on as possible before they come to fit then. When pressed their answer to the question ¿when? was next week possibly the week after. Hope we get them in by Christmas….