Mrs Spekkie out on a training ride between Ainsa and Barbastro. Beautiful Clear Skies, Good Roads and Strong Legs!
"The fate is cast, we have been tasked with defeating Mordor on 23 September - We need everyone's help, get your bike ready and come. And if we don't win, we might as well have a good time"
Big article about the race in this month's "bikes World" (Spanish MTB mag). Looks good.
Thanks for the updates. I had a haircut in barbastro when cycling barcelona to pamplona about 20 years ago, my hair was so minging after a few days cycling in the heat i had a numero uno...
I would love to do the trip again but now have villa lets till oct, maybe after when its cooled off. The vuelta passed by here yesterday, i love it.
I would love to do the trip again but now have villa lets till oct, maybe after when its cooled off. The vuelta passed by here yesterday, i love it.
Where's your villa, poolman? Just bought a place in Torrevieja, the Vuelta passed by there too yesterday.
The race is a big deal round here Mogrim 🙂
Here in Spain when you commission an architect to prepare a complete "Project" for you, he supplies you with two things:
Firstly a complete set of drawings. Drawings of how the property looks now and how it will look like when it's finished. Detailed schematics of the heating, electrical and plumbing layouts and detailed drawings of how various parts of the project - the roof, walls, floors etc, should be constructed.
Secondly he gives you a "Project Book". This is a 100 plus page book that he puts together which details all the rules and regulations pertaining to how the building work should be carried out on your specific build, which standards of materials must be used, etc etc.
The Project Book also contains "The Budget". This is a step by step list of every single job that needs to be carried out in the process of turning our agricultural barn into a house & home (or in our case, a home and a B&B!). It starts with the removal of the existing barn roofing, finishes with the final coat of varnish on the staircase handrails and includes every single activity in between. Each item has a "cost" next to it - the price of which comes from the official "Big Book of Pricing for Builders". The Builders themselves see this "Budget" (and no doubt have a copy off the Big Book) and when they quote you for a job, they quote, "mas or minus", in line with the architects recommended prices.
This means that for every job that needs to be done throughout the project, we know how much the architect says it should cost to do and how much the Builder wants to do it.
We will use this comparison to work out exactly how much the builder is going to charge us for each separate job that we ask him to do and we will use it to work out how much we are saving by doing certain jobs ourselves.
The “Intersport” sports shop in Ainsa has a bike workshop and Angel stocks a wide range of replacement Rear Mech Hangers there.
As with any MTB cycling holiday though, I’d advise you keep one of your own spare in your kit just in case … . I was in the shop chatting to Angel yesterday when a lad brought his bike in with a broken hanger and his own replacement part. He’d stacked on his first ride on the first day of a two week holiday!
Angel fitted it for him and fixed his bent brake lever and he was back on the trails by the afternoon 🙂
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I've spent this weekend riding Zona Zero with a group of guys from Denmark!
About 6 weeks ago a chap asked to join my FB page "MTB Ainsa!"
[url] https://www.facebook...18185251605562/ [/url]
He said he was flying down from Denmark with some friends to ride the Zona Zero trails and was reading up all he could about the area on-line. I gave him some help & info regarding bike hire shops etc because they were not all bring their own bikes and then when they got here on Friday Mrs Spekkie and I met them for a beer up in the Old Town Plaza. I offered to show them some of my favorite trails and so we all spent two days exploring together.
A really nice bunch of guys, into XC with "techy" descents, similar level of fitness and bike skill to me and not adverse to climbing - although Denmark is very very flat apparently, so it was hard work for them 🙂
This is exactly the sort of thing we are going to try and do for people when our B&B is open. Help them plan before they get here and then feed them, look after them and help them find their way around once they are here.
On Saturdays ride we ended up coming though our village, Guaso, and we stopped in at the farmhouse for a coffee with Mrs Spekkie and Rosa - who was very happy to have 5 "Guapo Hombres" (good looking young guys) in her kitchen while Ramon was out! I did the translating while they took photos of Rosa and her kitchen before we carried on with our ride. We stopped and had a look at our "house to be" on our way past and they loved it and the views. They are sure it will be fantastic once it's all done and they want to come back next year and stay with us - let's hope we have somewhere for them by then!
They enjoyed the riding, I enjoyed the English speaking company and Rosa enjoyed having visitors. It was a nice, though fairly tough, weekend.
Bent, Pauli, Jakob, Jan and Soren . . .
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Do you have an EU recognised guiding qualification and the necessary insurance, Spekkie? If not, even if you don't get grassed up by the qualified guides in the area, a serious accident would result in you losing the shirt off your back. Our club was guided by a French guide with all of his paperwork up to date.
Edukator - Yes I'm aware of the dangers of guiding someone without qualifications or insurance. It's not something we would want to get involved in.
This weekend was riding with friends. My involvement with "Guests" would stop at showing them "on paper" where to ride and how to get there and then leaving them to it.
The trails are so well signposted here that you don't need a guide to show you the way, but it's helpful to have someone to tell you which bits to do, to get the most out of your limited time here.
We are actually looking at the necessary qualifications because I'd quite like to get into the "mountain rescue" side of things too and they are related.
This weekend was riding with friends. My involvement with "Guests" would stop at showing them "on paper" where to ride and how to get there and then leaving them to it.
Be careful with this - you might still be liable as a ride "organiser", even if you're not actually guiding.
Edit: there's an article [url= http://www.aristasur.com/contenido/responsabilidad-civil-en-un-accidente-de-montana ]here[/url] - your responsability would be limited, although it would up to a judge to determine by how much. If you sent a clearly inexperienced group on a dangerous trail, for example, you could certainly face legal problems.
Good point mogrim. I'll keep that in mind.
This weekend was great because the guys were all very similar in fitness and tech ability to me. The only person to come off was . . . me.
To be honest, sending any group of inexperienced riders to ride anywhere in Zona-Zero is only going to end in tears. Either they will stack or they will come back knackered after having had a miserable few hours pushing their bikes up and down "un-rideable" climbs. I wouldn't promote Ainsa MTB to anyone who can't already ride. This is not the place to "learn riding".
For the non-riders, Ainsa and the surrounding areas have many many other things to offer. Amazing Geology, beautiful scenery, inhabited and uninhabited ancient villages, a wide variety of bird life - particularly birds of prey, hill walking, river swimming and fishing, tons of exploring . . . .
Some Pictures of our Project as it is now and as it will be once it's finished.
The first pic is of the back of the property with the sloping back garden - This side of the house faces North and North East - towards the Pyrenees. We have lovely views from here so the sloping back garden will be terraced into flat sitting areas for meals and sun bathing. It gets sun first thing in the morning but is nice and shady later in the day.
Second pic is the front of the property, which faces South & South West. Shaded in the morning (good for cleaning bikes in the cool!) but gets the afternoon sun later on. There will be some parking and a front garden with a little terrace here. Also our firewood stack will be up here.
Last pic is of the west side of the property. The Kitchen door will drop down a meter or so and the tower will be raised up just over a meter to allow for three floors. Mrs Spekkie wants herbs growing here next to the back door for when she's cooking
🙂
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Get stuck in !
The trails are so well signposted here that you don't need a guide to show you the way
Even our guide who had ridden the area before got lost. 😛
We are trying to keep track of the many Fiestas and Carnivals that happen locally over here through the summer so that if visitors ask us if there is anything on, we can tell them.
It involves drinking Beer & Wine, eating lots of food and watching Carnivals . . . it's a tough job, but someone has to do it!
Last Monday was the Barbastro Fiesta & Carnival. It's 45km away and we have friends who live there so we were invited to visit for the day 🙂
Every evening I feed the moms with Ramon the Friendly Farmer and then we let the babies run around in the open-sided barn for a bit while I fill the water troughs. Today I took a little video . . .
We've had a hectic last couple of weeks. It's been a combination of fun times, stressy times and plain old hard work. It takes it's toll on you, emotionally and physically, but it also motivates you to "get on" and make plans to change the bits you're not happy with . . .
The next couple of posts will cover everything that's happened in the last fortnight . . . .
🙂
You have my attention, and maybe a family holiday one year soon...
We spent the weekend in Zumaia area with the MTB club, about 3000e was spent between three albergés by 30. We're planning a trip to Ainsa some time, renting mobile homes on the campsite as the last gîte near Ainsa was nothing special. The best albergé near Zumaia had six double rooms, 20e50 per person per night with breakfast, bike washing, washing machine, safe storage, an excellent restaurant, showers available after check out on sunday.
Sounds good - that is a nice part of the coast too.
Who doesn't like a Party!?
"Fiesta" is Spanish for Party and here where we are we have two different types of Fiesta.
The most frequent kind is the Religious Fiesta, which is held at a Hermitage - a small Chapel named after a Saint and often found on remote hilltops or tucked away in among farm buildings. Following the Mass there is always plenty of nice wine and bread to eat or, if the hermitage is on a remote hilltop - we take a picnic 🙂
Years ago remote hermitages were maintained by the Hermits that lived in them. Nowadays the village or the family on who's land the Hermitage lies tend to look after them. Guaso has 6 of these Hermitage Chapels and therefore 6 of these Fiestas a year, including two in August and one in September - so we've been to three in recent weeks!
The second type of Fiesta is the sort of thing we're more familiar with. A "town" Fietsa starts in the afternoon with a Carnival and then has a Fun Fair, Beer stalls, Traditional Dancing, Fireworks etc etc and involves drinking and dancing in the streets. In the evening there are live bands on stages in the town Plaza and more drinking and eating.
We've also been to two of these in recent weeks!
For the moment we are all partied out . . . .
This Saturday is the Zona Zero race - "La Batalla Del Inframundo" (The Battle of the Underworld) in Ainsa, Spain.
This video shows you the views from one of the highest points of the race followed by one of the descents. No sure who the rider is but he's having fun!
I really am happy to be living in such a beautiful place!
Un adelanto de lo que deparará la Batalla del Inframundo este sábado. ¡No os lo perdáis! Gracias a Martín Campoy y Osole Visual
An advance of what the battle of the underworld will hold this Saturday. Don't miss it! Thanks to Martín Campoy and Osole Visual
Mrs Spekkie Road Riding between Ainsa and Campo.
A beautiful day, little traffic and fantastic scenery . . . .
Who doesn't love to buy a new car!?
When I first drove down to Spain from the UK with an old Mazda 626 full of our belongings, the plan was for the car to last 6 months. After that, if you plan on living here you have to either get yourself a Spanish car or have your UK car registered in Spain - Spanish number plates, Spanish Road Tax etc etc.
Registering a foreign car is a bit pricey - maybe to encourage you to buy a local car? And in order to get our car through the Spanish version of the Road Worthy / MOT test, we would also need to replace the headlights with ones designed for driving on the Right Hand side of the road instead of the left. The whole exercise wasn't really viable with such an old car so we started looking for a second-hand Spanish car . . . .
The second-hand market for cars here is not good. Cars tend to be expensive. Because so few new cars were sold during the Spanish Crisis that started in 2008, there is a "hole" in the second-hand car market.
We scoured the local car sales places (of which there are not many) and the internet in an attempt to find a suitable car but, as our building planning application dragged on and on the task of finding a car got put on the back burner . . .
During the summer months our foreign car was hidden among many other foreign cars here on holiday, but as the season headed towards a close we decided we really needed to get ourselves a cheap & cheerful car - that would be legal on the roads here.
Eventually Mrs Spekkie found a car that seemed suitable and, after some trips to the nearby town of Huesca and lots of question, we settled on a Hyundai Santa Fe.
It's quite old and has a fair few miles on the clock but it was affordable, came with new tyres and a new battery, it's clean and tidy and it has four wheel drive - which is essential if you live in the mountains and like to venture up paths designed for tractors!
The size is taking a bit of getting used to, but the steering wheel is on the correct side and we had a tow bar fitted so that we can use our bike rack and the trailer we bought over from our South Africa.
One day it would be nice to look for cars online and not have to always select the "Lowest Price First" option, but maybe that will come in time. Meanwhile, we are very happy.
We have finally started some work on our property!
A few weeks ago we invited a young English couple that we met at "Learn Spanish" class in town to come and see our "Viking Hut" before going out for Pizza & Beer.
They loved our place and, whilst showing them around, I explained to Ben that although we knew we couldn't start work on the actually "building" without enlisting the help of a builder, I would have been happy to start working on the sloping back garden - if it weren't for the fact that in every article I read about terracing & landscaping a sloping garden, "Step One" was to build a suitable retaining wall!
The existing very dodgy 1m high wall needed to be replaced by a good strong 3.5m high stone wall (leaning back at 15 degrees). Now, this isn't something to rush into . . . You stand a chance of the existing garden "slipping" when the old wall is removed if you're not careful and then I'd be in a world of mud!
To cut a long story short, Ben told me to stop being such a baby and that he'd help us get started if I got the materials ready 🙂
So, here we go . . . .
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I spoke to Angel from Zona Zero this week and he told me that last Saturdays "La Batalla Del Inframundo" was a huge success!
I couldn't ride but we did pop in to the registration on Friday evening up at the Ainsa Castle and it looked great. The race was well organised and well subscribed. I helped clear some of the route earlier in the year. I'm glad it went well. Hopefully it will become an annual event and next year I'll have a go!
Had a bit of a homesick moment this morning 🙁
We asked to have a towbar fitted to the new car when we bought it last week. Earlier this week I unpacked and checked over the Thule bike rack we brought with us from SA and yesterday I bought a couple of new number plates. One for the bike rack and one for our trailer - which we also bought over from SA.
This morning I put the bike rack on the car and tested the lights etc, then took off the old Johannesburg "GP" number plate and fitted one of my new Spanish ones.
In a previous life, we would have been loading our bikes onto this exact bike rack and driving out to Northern Farm or The Cradle of Humankind for a Saturday morning ride. That thought just struck me out of the blue and for a moment I missed our old lives 🙁
Chin up Tony, you live in a wonderful area with great people. Just a couple of points re your rack, did you get a revised ITV when you fitted the towbar? It's a legal requirement to have it noted on your registration. Also don't forget to have one of those red and white boards when you have the bikes on, again you can be fined otherwise, probably not needed for short trips round the lanes but some jobsworth may stop you for this.
Memories are good, life moves forward, enjoy your next ride; )
And keep up with the grand designs everyone loves a good build.
In your retaining wall don't forget drainage holes (depends on ground soil, rock conditions). Keep the posts going, thanks.
C
Cheers guys. I rode in the hills yesterday and again today and I remember why we love this place.
PB - the garage that fitted the towbar did us a new ITV, so all good. Will look out a warning board next time we're shopping too. Better safe than sorry.
Cheers cvilla - yes, on we go!
Ramon the Friendly Farmer has given us permission to use as many building stones from his land as we want to, for our house.
This pile used to be a sheep refuge for bad weather but it fell down sometime before he was born! So these stones have been laying here for at least 75 years and the last time people worked with them was probably around 130 years ago!
I’ll pick out all the useable ones 🙂
PS: This was something Edukator suggested a little while ago 😉
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Ramon the Friendly Farmer going down with his old trailer so we can load the first lot of stones.
Two loads later and we have enough stones to keep us busy for a while! We've piled them on the edge of our neighbour Javi's land. Ramon introduced us and Javi is more than happy to help 🙂
It is nice when everyone works together!
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Dismantling the existing retaining wall . . .
Taking down the retaining wall is easier than expected.
It's a dry stone wall, so once you clear the vegetation from along the top of the wall and cut the grass in front of the wall, you can unassemble the stones quite easily by hand or with a crowbar. Then gravity puts them down on the ground for you 🙂
We're taking away the front face of stones, which go back about 30cm and then clearing away some of the loose rocks that lie behind the front face. All of the stones can be re-used. Ones with decent flat faces can be used on the new front wall again and anything odd shaped can be cemented behind the front face for additional strength.
The final concreted wall will be between 40 and 50 cm thick and behind the newly concreted bit we will leave the original loose stones. Not sure how deep into the hillside the existing wall goes but it looks like it's around a meter! So, with the new cemented front face, the cemented loose rock behind it and the existing loose rock that is tied into the hillside - we should be fine!
🙂
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After one day of wall building with our friends from the UK who live down the road . . .
The girls on the cement mixer, my mate laying stones and me labouring!
We concentrated on getting the corner started, and in the right place according to the limits of the property, and then working our way up the hill. We left one very big base stone in place and after a few meters we were able to incorporate some of the exiting wall "as is" . . .
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2nd day of work and the wall is looking good! The corner is solid and the front wall slopes back "mas o minus" the 15 degrees it needs.
We're making use of some of the very big stones that are there from the original wall. They aren't going anywhere and they're in the right place - so it's fine.
Filling behind the wall with small rocks & stones and cement to give the wall enough depth.
🙂
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Nicer weather on your side of the hill than here today then. When you've had enough practicing on the garden wall you be ready to build the house walls. 8)
Promo Clip for the "Inframundo" race the other week . . .
That abandonned village means something to me. It's not far from this canyon I did years back:
I don't recognise the canyon, but the Sierra de Guara park is just down the road.
Keep it up op
Cheers senor j!
After two long hard days of working with friends,(and with lunch supplied by Rosa, the Farmers wife!) we'd made a great start on our retaining wall and we were left with the beginnings of a good strong wall with a nice level top for us to continue building on.
Yesterday we added a bit to it on our own, following the lines that had already been started . . . and I think we're doing ok.
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Today is a day off . . . . 🙂
A phone was found by someone out on one of the trails used for the Zona Zero "Inframundo" race the other weekend. They handed it in to the Tourist Information Office in Ainsa and now it has been reunited with the person that lost it.
Firstly, it's cool that it was spotted - dropped "somewhere" on the 66km long route!
Secondly, it's cool that it was handed in.
I do love this community we live in here in Spain.
🙂
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The best albergé near Zumaia had six double rooms, 20e50 per person per night with breakfast, bike washing, washing machine, safe storage, an excellent restaurant, showers available after check out on sunday.
Is that the one on the top of the hill? With the cow shed behind? I stayed there a couple of years back, nice people and a lovely place to have a beer overlooking the coast.
Agote Aundi in Askizu 50m south of the church, Mogrim.
Agote Aundi in Askizu 50m south of the church
Not the same then, we were in Santa Klara on the hill above it.
Santa Klara, that's the one on the turning with the big tyre (approaching from the west) that's the end/start of the coastal path loop into Zumaia. It's only two and half hours from where we live and great for a weekend: hiking, biking, friendly accomodation that's good value (and they're happy to speak Spanish), good places to eat out (especially if you like seafood) - a lot to like.
Edit: having checked Google earth the big tyre wasn't there when they filmed that road.
'Ramon the friendly farmer' Lol see a children's book franchise!
Last night we went to bed shattered!
The retaining wall is coming on nicely but it's hard work. Buying a property on a hill means you can have great views and (eventually) beautiful terraced gardens with water features etc, but actually working on a garden that slopes this much is hard work.
Every wheelbarrow of rock or cement has to be dragged up a hill, or equally has to be rolled down a hill. A runaway wheelbarrow is no fun at all!
Happy days. It will look good when its done
[i] ctk - Member
'Ramon the friendly farmer' Lol see a children's book franchise! [/i]
Another idea! 🙂
Mrs Spekkie and I are both looking for jobs at the moment. . . .
It would be good to find something locally, but the two main fields of employment around here are Tourism and Agriculture - both of which are seasonal and both of which are covered either "within the family" or by employing . Of course once we're up and running with our B&B we will fall into the tourism bracket ourselves. In the meantime we're hoping to find something, pretty much anything really, that will help us cover our living expences.
We're looking at On-Line work, which we could do from home, but we're also looking for "proper jobs" further afield. We may end up renting and staying local to our work during the week and coming home to Guaso at the weekends, but we're ok with that.
So, as well as all our building work last week, Mrs Spekkie and I had to find time to make a trip to the nearby town of Sabiñánigo so that we could visit the Department of Employment and register ourselves there.
We found the employment office easily enough, on the outskirts of town. Nice modern offices with plenty of parking. Went inside and waited for someone to become available, which took no more than two minutes. So far so good. . . .
We sat in front of a middle aged Spanish woman who, we soon realised, was clearly not happy with her lot in life!
We spoke to her in our best Spanish but apparently she struggled to understand us. Strange because let's face it, we didn't go into the "Employment" office to discuss the Philosophies of Medieval Kings & Queens or Particle Acceleration using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN . . .
Anyway, she turned to her colleague (a middle aged Spanish man), and told him he would have to help her because this was going to be VERY COMPLICATED. I moved over to his desk and, after 20 minutes, I was registered on their system as being available for work, he'd filled in my Personal Profile, issued me with a temporary password to access my account of their system, registered my driving license and told me encouragingly that although unemployment was a problem in Spain, maintenance engineering and knowledge of Variable Speed Drives was in demand. He also told me that his brother-in-law was from the UK and that he hoped we were happy, having moved to Spain.
During the same 20 minutes Mrs Spekkie got almost none of the above done for her. When the lady was "finished" with her she ended up coming to join me and my helpful man and he did all the bits the lady didn't do properly.
Thankfully the office wasn't staffed but two unhelpful people. If it had been then instead of coming away feeling quite motivated, I would have come away feeling pretty despondent - like Mrs Spekkie did.
This is very spooky Tony. On Friday we went to Tortosa, our administrative centre, to register Trish on the Catalan tax system. This is because she has got a job teaching English to 13-18 year old schoolkids in our local town. The process involved having 2 appointments half an hour apart at offices at either end of Tortosa. The first one took 10 minutes and generated a fiscal number which we needed at the second one, then it was back in the car and over the river to the other office where the rest of the paperwork was issued, the whole process took half an hour. The major benefit, apart from the teaching income, is that we are now both eligible for free health care under the Capsalut system rather than having to pay €150 a month for private health insurance which is compulsory for foreign residents in Spain.
Had a great Sunday ride which included around 1200m of climbing with a friend from the UK and his daughter. As always, the views were amazing and it was a beautiful sunny day - but not too hot.
[url] https://www.relive.cc/view/g15051447456 [/url]
I love this thread. Nothing else to say but when I see an update I make this the first one too look at. I hope all goes well for you and Mrs Spekkie.
Cheers MtM - glad you're enjoying it!
We're enjoying living it.
This is great news for us . . . 🙂
***********************************
From Zona Zero - Ainsa, Aragon, Spain.
There are only a few weeks left until the new Zona Zero initiative comes into being!
ZONA ZERO ROAD - A project dedicated to the road bicycle . . .
After many months of work and thanks to the selfless help of a few local volunteers, without whom it would have been impossible to make any progress with this project, on the weekend of November 17-19 we will welcome "Zona Zero Road" - a project that is dedicated to the road bicycle and reaffirms the position of the region of Sobrarbe as a world center for cycling tourism.
A total of 13 routes (with many variants) will allow the lovers of the "skinny wheels" to explore Sobrarbe and its surrounding areas, but this time by road.
Taking in many towns within the Sobrabe and neighbouring regions, the valleys of Añisclo & Ordesa, or those of Chistau & Pineta are just some of the routes proposed in the Pyrenean region. The route to Alquézar passes through Biello Sobrarbe and the villages and canyons of the of the Sierra de Guara.Natural Park.
There is also a Spanish/French "cross-border collaboration" with plans for routes that cross the Pyrenees to join the Aure and Louron valleys, where you will find some of the most mythical climbs of le Tour de France, including the Col de Peyresourde, Col d'Aspin, Tourmalet and Col d'Aze.
The routes will be presented on the Zona Zero website www.bttpirineo.com with illustrative photos, maps, profiles as well as a route summary and the average gradients of the climbs.
The Route Profiles have a design that is very similar to those used for the stages of le Tour de France and have been made, just like the maps, using the free Route Editor on the "www.cronoescalada.com" website - to whom we are especially grateful for their help!
Next year will see the installation of route signs, the publication of leaflets and brochures and an upload to the web of the exhaustive profiles of each mountain climb. . . . .
We can now add “Climbing the Peña Montañesa” to the list of local activities that we can tell our visitors about!
It was a tough day to the summit and back but very well worth it.
Car park is at about 1000m (400m higher than Ainsa) and the summit is at 2295m.
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*like*
How cheap are flights from Scotland to your area?
[i]matt_outandabout - Member
*like*
How cheap are flights from Scotland to your area? [/i]
Not sure. We have friends here at the moment from Scotland but they drove here with their Camper Van.
Ryanair fly to Barcelona from Edinburgh . . . . 😉
We had one of my old school friends and his wife come over from England and stay with us a few weeks ago. It was great to catch up - it's been a long time. We were together at Witbank High School back in the day. Of course now Mrs Spekkie has a load of "info" on me that she will use when she needs to get the upper hand . . .
We picked my friends up from Zaragoza airport, which is the nearest airport to us - about a 2 hour drive. It was the first time we'd ever been there and what a pleasure. Reminded us a bit of Lanseria airport - only much smaller and quieter. Parking is reasonably priced and right outside the front doors, the cafeteria was clean and had some decent food & drink and because it's not very busy, getting through check-in and security were a breeze. I'm really pleased because this is our "local" airport 🙂
Having someone stay with us who's never been here before is good for us - because it reminds us of how we felt when we first found this place. There's just no way around the fact that eventually you just get used to wherever you live and can even take it for granted. In the same way that someone living near a railway line or a freeway eventually gets used to the noise, if you live in somewhere quiet like Guaso, you get used to it.
We can see Monte Perdido, which is the third highest mountain the the Pyrenees, from our garden - but you do get used to looking at the mountains, you get used to it being so very quiet, you get used to the lack of fences and to living in a small community where, if you hear a car coming, you can usually tell who it is before it comes into view by either the engine sound or what time of the day it is!
It doesn't hurt to have someone remind you of how lucky you are to live where you live and how very beautiful it all is.
So . . . thanks to John & Michelle for re-motivating us!
🙂
Our Spanish car pulling our South African trailer 🙂
It wasn't easy bringing the trailer over here. You have to de-register it in SA to take it out of the country which turned out to be a bit complicated, but it's such a nice trailer and I really thought we could use it here - so we bought it over.
In Spain it has the same plate as the car towing it and there's no additional tax to pay.
We have big plans for it . . . watch this space!
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The “Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido” is a vast National Park with World Heritage status. It is rich with wildlife, mountains, lakes & forests and is home to the third highest peak in the Pyrenees mountains - the Monte Perdido (the Lost Mountain) - which summits at 3355m.
The park is about an hours drive from our house - and we still haven’t been and had a look!
We can see the Monte Perdido from the farmhouse kitchen window though
🙂
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Last week we were invited to the local movie theater in Boltaña to see the premier of a movie that was made locally with financial help from several local councils and "Crowd Funding".
The film was called "Ara Salvaje" which translates into "the wild river Ara" and it's a story about a local man, Martin Campoy, who wanted to ride, document and promote the last remaining wild river in this area, the river Ara.
The film was in Spanish but we got the general idea of what was going on. More importantly we got to see some fantastic footage, including shots taken from a drone, of the river Ara that passes through Boltaña and Ainsa on it's way from the top of the mountains down into the Mediano Dam.
We cross this river every time we go pretty much anywhere from our house and we swim in it in the Summer. Rivers are important here and this movie did a good job of showing that.
Watch this Promo clip that was made when the rider and his wife were originally fundraising and get a taste of where it is that we live . . . .
🙂
Check out where people regularly die on the tourist route up Monte Perdido before you do it. A rope for those few metres isn't a luxury. It's crossing a scree runnel not far from the top and if you start sliding you're dead. We took a ridge route then on and off the glacier (if there still is one) which is proper climbing but perhaps safer.
Skiing up the Taillon is a Winter classic, or over the Breche into France.
There's another canyon just East of the main one which is perhaps more impresive.
I hope it was good, we were nearby but couldn’t make it. Martin is taking it to our local mountaineering club so I’ll see it next week. We used some of last years tips to help with the crowd funding 🙂
It’s the last remaining undamed river in the Pyrenees. Despite the travesty that was Jànovas where people were forced out of their homes to make way for a reservoir that was never made. It’s a spooky place, well worth a visit if you’ve not made it there yet.
It was very good - and nice to listen to Martins presentation.
We go to Janovas often - it's on Route 6 Light. And being only ten mins drive away so we tend to take our friends there to see it when they visit.
Good to see it being re-built now.
Some time ago Mrs Spekkie and I joined an online worldwide network of Expats called "Internations".
Yesterday we drove through to Zaragoza to do some shopping and then in the evening we attended an Internations get-together held in an Irish Bar in the center of Zaragoza.
We spent the evening speaking lots of English and chatting to people from Spain, Portugal, Germany, the UK, the US, Russia and Equador! We had a lovely evening and made some new friends . . . and we we're home by 3am!
A couple of ideas/comments:
The routes will be presented on the Zona Zero website http://www.bttpirineo.com with illustrative photos, maps, profiles as well as a route summary and the average gradients of the climbs.
Change the URL. A site called BTT whatever is not about road bike routes.
And the second point: trail running is booming in Spain, you might want to look into that. The Peña Montesa might well have a "vertical kilometre" route, something you could certainly set up as a race. (You've got the height difference, but you'd need to check the horizontal distance). The rocks look great though, a lot like the routes round here.
Haven't posted on the thread in a while but always reading 8)
[i] Edukator - Reformed Troll
Check out where people regularly die on the tourist route up Monte Perdido before you do it. A rope for those few metres isn't a luxury. It's crossing a scree runnel not far from the top and if you start sliding you're dead. We took a ridge route then on and off the glacier (if there still is one) which is proper climbing but perhaps safer. [/i]
No plans on climbing Perdido ourselves! We'll take a walk through the park but leave the serious climbing to other people.
Not sure how they will package the "Road Routes" mogrim - but the launch is this weekend - so we'll soon see.
Last week I posted a link here to a locally made cultural movie. (a few posts above this one)
This week on Monday at our "Learn Spanish" lesson, which is held at the Adult Education Center up in Ainsa Old Town, I mentioned going to the premier of the movie to our teacher, Carmen, who - it turns out - is the Mayoress of the village of Broto, which features in the movie and who had also been invited to the premier.
We had a nice little chat, in Spanish of course, about the film, the area it was filmed in and the people who made it 🙂
Tomorrow will be our final day of picking Olives!
For the last two and a half weeks we've been helping Ramon & Rosa pick olives for a few hours every day. They have around 50 trees, some big & some small, that needed to be done. Half are up here at the farm and the others are down on the land near the river. We've had beautiful weather and it's certainly been "an experience" but by now all four of us are sick to death of it and will be glad when the last tree is finished tomorrow!
I guess we have around a thousand kilos of olives by now which will be taken to the olive processing plant down the road and pressed into oil. You only harvest olives every two years - so whatever they get from this batch has to last that long . . .
Rosa always has a smile ready . . .
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Ramons pride and joy - he bought it brand new 45 years ago!
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Wherever you are on the farm, the view is spectacular 🙂
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We woke up to a surprise heavy mist this morning. I could barely see 5m out of the windows!
By 10am the sun had burned through the mist up in Guaso though and it turned into another sunny day.
We could still see mist down in the valleys so we drove up our hill to Guaso church and took a couple of pics and a video. Snow fell on the higher mountains last night too.
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That'll be a lot whiter by the end of next week.
We had the pleasure of meeting an STW member and his family recently when they visited our area of Spain to d some climbing and some riding.
They've been following our story on here and on FB and recently drove down from the Isle of Skye in Scotland on a "camper-can road trip".
Was nice to finally meet him in person, along with his partner and daughter.
While they were here we all climbed the Peña Montañesa together, which I posted about a little while ago, and we did a few rides together. They also spent a day helping us pick olives with Ramon and Rosa and a day helping me with my "Garden wall building".
Was really nice to be able to just speak English for a while!
iPad auto correct thinks it knows best . . . .
I think we can safely say that Winter is here!
Beautiful clear skies and warm enough during the day when you're in the sunshine, but cold in the shade and temps dropping to below freezing overnight.
No wind or rain so far . . . 🙂
Beautiful clear skies and warm enough during the day when you're in the sunshine, but cold in the shade and temps dropping to below freezing overnight.
Sounds like Madrid, then! Bloody freezing the past few days, forecast -5 minimum for the weekend...