Buying and renovating a rural property on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees

Welcome to what we’ve had for 6 months, but without the alternate sunny days.

The lower stretches of the river Ebro are at levels unseen for years. I use a little ferry when out on the bike which relies on the current to glide across unpowered. 3 days ago it was borderline, now it’s had to close as the ramp is flooded.

You arrived for one of the best winters ever and now this one is one of the worst. Not just here, lots of parts of Spain and even the riviera are flooded! Check out the snow in the alps, my friends are skiing fresh powder somewhere in France today.

For a place with 330 dry days a year it is incredibly unusual. Last week we were ducking and diving all over the place trying to get the best options to ride and ended up getting soaked a couple of times. In 10 years of doing this and riding these areas I’ve not seen another “spring” like this and the rest of my team have over 100 years of experience in these areas between them and they are saying the same.

Today we have to take a big detour on our way to ride because one of the roads has collapsed! It really is exceptionally unusual weather.

The sun is coming anyway, next week looks warm and dry, maybe normal service will resume!!

The sun is coming anyway, next week looks warm and dry, maybe normal service will resume!!

I certainly hope so, in 4 weeks time a group of us are riding bikepacking -style from Tarragona to Bilbao across the Systema Iberica and Cantabrian mountains. Having nightmares about the trails turning to cloying clag.

weeksy – condolences!

PB – watching the news and the Ebro is only 20cm or so short of its highest ever, which was in 2015! Is that the ferry we used with the car to go over to the castle?

Doug – I’m happy to hear that this is unusual. Wouldn’t want this every year. Where had the road collapsed?

Yes Tony, the ferry to Miravet is closed. When I took it on Monday, the car that was on it nearly grounded as the ramp hadn’t been able to float up with the river. It’s a ramshackle thing at the best of times, the crossing time must have halved with the speed of the current. I tried posting a pic but it wouldn’t work. Hope the rain doesn’t bugger up the great wall of Guaso!

My wall is standing firm and all the drain holes are working nicely 🙂

i remember the ferry. I think it was a year since we visited you this week.

same weather in south of France , last year my kids were swimming in the river . no chance this year .

We have so much going on at the moment that proper updates have taken a back seat. This weekend we have some free time – so I’ll try and get everything back on track.

Our “Big Adventure” continues . . .

We are currently preparing revised paperwork for a new trip to talk to the banks

🙂

Today’s an important day for us. Work want to discuss a “Summer Contract” with me.

Getting a good work contract for the summer will have a significant influence on how we proceed with our “Big Adventure” . . . so, fingers crossed that after 2 months of work so far, they feel I’m actually worth having around

🙂

Good Luck.

Good luck Tony, hope you get what you want. We’re off on our Tarragona to Bilbao bikepacking trip on Friday, it should be quite different to last year with the amount of rain we’ve had. The ferry is still closed as the river Ebro is so high.

Aye good luck Spekkie.  Still hoping to come down and camp there in the summer – we tried at Easter but the weather wasn’t looking much fun.  Diverted to Catalunya instead.

There’ve been huge dumps of water here, and the steep, narrow valleys put a strain on the rivers.   Coming back from work the other day on the train along the Oria and the usual plastic crap that gets caught in the trees along the banks was surprisingly high up, above head height.  Fields of veg have been reduced to mud.

Any news?

The weather has been mental all over Bob. We’ve been very lucky in Guaso / Ainsa but other parts of Spain have suffered,

Having said that, today we had a thunderstorm sneak over the Peña Montañesa and rain stopped work early so we didn’t get to discuss my contract!

Hopefully mañana . . . . .

Mrs Spekkie and I drove through to Huesca, which is about an hour and a half away and is our nearest big administrative city – to finish applying for our Spanish Driving Licenses today.

Everything went OK, our paperwork was all correct and we’ve been given cover letters to drive with until the Licence Card itself comes in the post in a week or twos time.

Another step in the right direction 🙂

I had planned to get my “European Guiding Qualification” this Spring so that I could potentially start “working” this Summer, but because I’ve actually been working at a local campsite for the last couple of months, I’ve been putting the trip off.

Tomorrow at work I should find out whether I have guaranteed work over the Summer at the campsite. If I do then I will push the Guiding Course back until after the season ends – which is at the end of September. If not then I will plan to do it asap.

Tomorrow at work I should find out whether I have guaranteed work over the Summer at the campsite. If I do then I will push the Guiding Course back until after the season ends – which is at the end of September. If not then I will plan to do it asap.

If you got the qualification before the summer, could you use it to make more money than doing the job that may materialise?

You seem to be so close – would it not be better to just get it done?

If you got the qualification before the summer, could you use it to make more money than doing the job that may materialise?

You seem to be so close – would it not be better to just get it done?

That is, as they say, the million dollar question.

Having just spent a splendid week motorcycling in this region I am mightily jealous of your bravery to buy and renovate here. We rode past your village on our way towards Ainsa and then Fiscal where we stayed for 3 nights. A definate area I’ll return to this year with the MTB.

Glad you enjoyed it. Will be good to see you on an MTB Dave!

Following on from my post about getting a Guiding Qualification . . .

So, we’re about to take the first steps in a slightly different direction . . . .

Work at a local campsite has provided us with some income for the last few months and that income has been welcome.

The 6 month “summer work-contract” however, which they promised me and which would have helped us with regards to securing a loan from the banks to cover our renovations has not been forthcoming….

Had the contract been offered, it would have covered us up until the end of the camping season, which is at the end of September.

Our original plan was to work under contract until the end of September and then in October, the week after the contract finished, to travel down to Almeria in the south of Spain so that I could attend an MTB Guiding Course that will earn me my Mountain Bike Guiding Certificate and allow me to guide people safely and legally around the hills and caminos of the Zona Zero MTB trails, where we live.

Our intention from day one has always been to be able to show our cycling guests around, but we wanted to get the B&B built and up & running first. Now our new plan is to take a week away from work at the campsite, since I’m not tied in with a contract, and go down to Almeria in 10 days time to do the course sooner rather than later

When we come back we will have some paper work to complete and some insurance to take out, but essentially I will be ready to start guiding people who are visiting the area and instead of it being a service we offer our guests, it will be a business we run in order to help fund the renovations of our B&B!

Depending on how work goes between now and when I leave for the course (things have been rather strained lately for various reasons), I may or may not continue working casually at the campsite when we return. We will see.

Whatever the case, we have decided that we need to take back charge of our own lives. We’ve spent a lot of time over the last two years waiting for various people to deliver on their promises. Now it’s time for us to keep the promises we made to ourselves and to each other and get this thing done by hook or by crook!

Wish us luck . . . .

You won’t have much trouble doing as well as the local guides. We chatted with a guide on a junction, I said the variant was straight on, he said right then had doubts, walkied off to look at the signs and phoned his boss to check, it was straight on. Friendly and helpful all the same and the clients were happy people.

Sorry I din’t get in touch, we found Angelo in Intersport and he was helpful with routes and how to find you but I didn’t find time to get away for my clubmates and drop into the campsite.

Excellent riding as ever;

Bits of 3 a 6 the first day before a storm loomed

13 and variants (excellent) the second day and then half way around 4 before the weather broke and we dropped down to Ainsa in the hail

Last day we went back to 4 to do the bits we’d missed and revist the rest.

Good luck with the guiding course, the French brevet d’état tkaes a year and is really hard (a clubmate did it on a year off work) – you have to do a trials, BMX, road MTB to a good standard olong with navigation, first aid, how to run a business etc. so think yourself lucky you chose Spain. Learn the stuff you need to know backwards before you get to the course, my mate failed on theory the first time haivng survived the trials section.

And some comments on the riding:

There’s uplift available ffrom local operators but we’re happy to ride up the climbs. The routes are well thought out with easy climbs and descent from fun to gnarly. Most of the routes are doable in a half day apart from the Inframundo. Best get out early as the storms arrive at the end of the day in Spring.

The descents are quite rocky compared witht the Basque country or western French Pyrenees but smoother than the Med coast. You feel shaken rather than beaten up. They’re in much better condition than many Alpine trails which suffer from high use and erosion. I walked at some point on both big descents on 4, there is a good clinic in Ainsa as a clubmate found out on our first visit but I’d rather spend the evening enjoying Ainsa nightlife. Wet limestone is slippery as **** so careful when it starts to rain.

The climbs are mostly modest with about 300m of height gain a couple of times on a route, a few a bit longer and Inframundo is a proper hard day out. There’s tarmac double track and bit of single and nearly all of it rideable on the routes we’ve done on our visits.

Edukator – Funnily enough I saw Angel yesterday and he said someone had been asking about me 🙂

o worries for not catching up. Glad you enjoyed the riding – nice ride report.

The storms and in fact the weather in general has been a problem these last few weeks. Not for me, but for people camping who are all trying to dry clothes strung out on lines between trees!

The “Festival Zona Zero Sobrarbe”

EWS 2018 Round 7 – 22–23 September 2018 @ “Zona Zero” Sobrarbe.

Looking forward to this!

Last night I was doing some late night studying for my upcoming MTB Guiding Certificate.

Looking forward to it 🙂

Packing the car for our Road Trip. We’re driving down to Almeria, which is about 9 hours away, so that I can attend a Mountain Bike Guiding Course.

Tonight we will be staying over with some friends who live in Catalonia – which is about a third of the way there. The route passes by their front door! Will be great to catch up with them again and stopping over means we turn the trip into a nice easy 2-part drive.

Will post my progress on here as it goes . . . . .

Good luck with the course, if you fancy testing your newly acquired guiding skills after your course on some tourists we are in Ainsa from sunday for the next couple of weeks for some riding and exploring the area.

We’re driving down to Almeria, which is about 9 hours away, so that I can attend a Mountain Bike Guiding Course.

That was cunning, chosing somewhere at completely the opposite end of Spain 🙂

I’m happy to say that, after a few very intensive days, I am going to be awarded my first professional MTB Guiding qualification.

Relieved to say the least. Now it’s onwards and upwards 🙂

mogrim – It was quite a way and a very different landscape here.

bpd – we’ll be back in Ainsa in a few days. Happy to meet up for a coffee or a beer and a chat.

More to the point: will it ever stop raining in this bloody country? “Sunny Spain” my arse.

A week to get a qualification! Jeez that’s lightweight.

Junior is in The Alps for yet another course towards his French Brevet d’état which is what you need on this side of the hill. The MTB one takes a year but he’s doing the SKI/snowboard one. so far:

Test technique (a times slalom to get you into the system)

Pré fo’ (two weeks)

25 day stage d’observation

Euro test (a timed giant slalom to eliminate anyone not really quick)

4 weeks premier cycle

25 day stage d’application

One week tronc commun (all mountain guides from any discipline have to do  this)

and that’s only half way through, it takes about 6 years to fully qualify.

More to the point: will it ever stop raining in this bloody country? “Sunny Spain” my arse.

It’s pretty much aways like this up here in Mordor, the hills are a lovely colour though!  33mm forecast for this afternoon.  Our bathroom has been a jungle of drip-drying cycling kit recently.

A guy who guides locally is midway through a 12 day luxury tour with someone Americans. Wonder if they’ve done much cycling? 😂

Where are you Mogrim?

Spekkie, not sure on plans yet as blew the shear pins on the rohloff on day one’s ride and then to top that stripped the rear qr whilst trying to figure out what was happening meaning a long wander back in to town. Currently trying to source some parts from Germany/UK to potentially fix it, still got my solo but really wanted to ride with mrs bpd and push the boundaries of what we can ride on the tandem, she has no longer got skills/confidence if we rented a solo so unsure on whether we’ll drift home early with a grump on or stay.

Where are you Mogrim?

Madrid. And it seems like it’s been raining every weekend since January…. while the weather’s perhaps not the sunny paradise Spanish marketing would have you believe, it really has been particularly foul this year!

Edukator – it’s only the first step up quite a long ladder. We discussed the French requirements and it’s crazy the amount of stuff you have to do.

So our road trip is over 🙁

It was a 1950 km round trip – so further than Jo’burg to Durban but not as far as Jo’burg to CPT.

Good roads and for the most part, little traffic. Need to update the Garmin though – often it told us we were in the middle of a field when we were actually on a new road!

On the trip down we stopped and visited some friends and on the trip back we stopped and visited some family. We even met up with an expat FB friend from the UK whose been following our adventure.

Was great to see my Aunty Jan & Uncle Ian. You don’t realise how much you miss family until you see family 🙁

The MTB course was a success and I’ll be posting more about that later.

Ramon and Rosa were very please to see us when we got back. Rosa gets so upset when we go anywhere. You’d think they’d appreciate some peace and quiet but apparently not.

Now we’re looking forward to putting some new plans into place. We’ll update as we go . . . .

🙂

It’s always nice to meet up with old friends or to make new ones. In the last week we’ve done both 🙂

The evening we got home from our road trip we met up with a guy from SA who has been following our adventure on-line since it started. He originally looked us up two years ago when he was cycling in this area on his own. This year he’s back with a couple of friends on motorbikes and we caught up with them for dinner. Was great seeing him again. Wish it could have been for longer but I know, we all have schedules to keep!

Then last night we met up with a couple from Scotland whom we’ve never met before but who have also been following our adventure on STW and FB. They are touring the area in a camper van and, despite a few misses and plan changes, we finally met them for drinks and a chat. We also took them for a quick spin around the village and showed them our “project”. Was very nice to meet them and we look forward to seeing them again!

Despite our endless optimism, the delays and problems we go through do get us down sometimes and so it’s always a welcome relief to have someone look at our property and the views from the garden and remind us that it really is amazing.

🙂