This is fantastic news for us – because it’s where we are going to live!

“Huge congratulations to Centro BTT Pirineos Zona Zero in Spain (EWS Round 7) for taking the Pinkbike Enduro Race of the Year Award! The results were decided by 50 of the sport’s top riders and media who’d all been at every race this year. Well done to all the events nominated – putting on an enduro race is a massive undertaking and they all did a fantastic job.”

(Auto translated from Spainish – edited by me!)

“It’s an honor that the “Specialized Bicycles Opel España Enduro Festival” hosted by Zona Zero in September 2015, the seventh race of the Enduro World Series, has received the recognition of Pinkbike as the best Enduro race of 2015. Even more significant because the vote was cast by the top racers and journalists.

It wasn’t a perfect race, we are aware of this, and we have a lot to improve, so this gives us strength and vision to try to do so much better in coming years.

This award is vested in all who made it possible to hold the event, both our public and private partners, such as the entire Society Ainsa and Sobrarbe, all participants, public, the media and especially the more than 200 volunteers on the ground who worked from sun up to sun down (and from moon to moon), doing everything necessary to make this a success. Correcting in real life the mistakes we made on paper and doing it all with good vibe and smiles throughout the week. Well done guys! Next year, with the help of Spekkie from South Africa, will be equally as successful, if not better”

Pinkbike Article

I thought Tweedlove would have got more votes, maybe not top 5 but not as low as they are

Tweedlove was good, but they’d taken out some of the really techie stuff from the year b4 and then there was the strop out over the pedally stage, plus canceling the last stages due to weather.
I also spoke to mechanics and photographers who weren’t feeling the wet n windy vibe.

Gutted ZZ wasn’t on this years EWS as I quite fancied having a go !

I was riding in Ainsa last week and rode 7 of the 8 stages – they really were fantastic

I’ll be there in three weeks and my bike will be there a week later. I have to ride and log all the routes so that I can promote them and our B&B – it’s a tough job but someone has to do it.

It’s a fantastic place. My pick of last year.

I’m looking forward to discovering the whole area this year 🙂

Hopefully Ainsa will feature with the EWS again in 2017.

Fantastic news and I’m delighted to have been a part of it. It’s been amazing watching the area grow over the last 8 years and helping as we can. The guys put so much effort into everything and they really deserved to win that. We were given places for the race and were here with a group taking part and it was an incredibly good weekend and the organizers seemed to go that extra mile on everything. The last two weeks we have been running a trip in the area, riding the EWS stages and a bunch of local secrets and it was cool to see that award on Pinkbike. I think we will see another round here in 2017.

Just for fun I was running down memory lane with some photos from the Zona Zero area. Here is a photo from about 7 years ago on one of my first trips to the area. I was SKINT and had hardly any biking clothes. I was on a Cove Hustler with a top that I found by the side of the road, my tyres were worn out and the bike was held together with love and not much else. I was there with a local friend checking it out and we were sleeping in his car I think.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/8QYaSN]South Pyrenees Roadtrip[/url] by basqueMTB – mountain biking holidays, on Flickr

And the same trail yesterday. What a roller coaster the last 7 years have been, blood sweat and tears but an incredible journey. I can definitely take a better photo now!
[url=https://flic.kr/p/Da8wX7]Rocks and abandoned villages with big, snowy backdrops on our #winter #Enduro trip this week. The theme of the week has been rocks and short sleeved tops as temperatures soared to almost 20 decC. Here @narthenrob floats over the rocks at the top of anothe[/url] by basqueMTB – mountain biking holidays, on Flickr

Looks fantastic. I am hoping to retire out to Spain in 5 or so years, living in motorhome and chasing sun and trails. We were in that area last year. Stunning place.