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

Tracey – If you get a minute, message me before you leave 🙂

Tony – six six six zero one nine six five seven

Cheers.

Code for Spain is (+34) btw 🙂

Hi Tony

Sent you a text

Was good to meet up Tracey – and great to see Abigale up on the stage!

Good luck for next week.

T.

Friday was Practice day for the Pros and Challenge day for the non-pro entrants.

The “Challenge” consisted of three stages, 2 off road and a third which started on top of one of the walls of Ainsa Castle and rode through the streets and down the many steps of Ainsa Old Town.

This section was also the Prologue stage for the Pros. . . .

The Challenge was tough and the day was hot. The atmosphere was amazing!

We started off the morning watching in the town of Boltana, which is a few km’s from where we live.

Bikes everywhere and riders making last minute adjustments to their bikes . . . .

(Zona Zero Route 3 Light crosses this bridge in the opposite direction to these riders. I ride it a few times a week and I’ve never seen it like this!)

This was the bottom of one of the descents on Stage 1 of the Challenge.

About half way through the stage, a tricky switchback descent.

(This is actually part of Zona Zero Route 10)

Stage 2 of the Challenge includes this drop. I caught some nice vids of riders coming down here which I’ll post later.

(This is part of Zona Zero Route 5)

The third and final stage of the Challenge, which is also the Prologue for the Pros, started on the Castle Wall!

Racing though the cobbled streets of the Old Town, Ainsa!

What can I say? “Be the Leopard!” … .

Really enjoyed reading this Tony, thank you for detailing your adventures. Although I wish I’d read it a few weeks ago as we’ve just got back from a weekend in Ainsa watching the EWS. We probably, unwittingly, walked past you a few times….

We’re just over a couple of hours away from you on the French side of the mountains and after this weekend we’re really looking forward to coming back and getting some riding in, perhaps even making use of your guiding services.

Absolutely gorgeous part of the world and even got us doubting our choice of SW France as home!

It was great wasn’t it?

I’m still sorting through photos and vids, so will be a few more updates on here yet.

If you do come back, get in touch and we’ll chat 🙂

T.

We will definitely be back and will certainly get in touch.

Just got to up the fitness levels a bit first…..

Fitness helps – but we do have some easier trails around here too. It’s not all crazy Enduro

🙂

EWS Day 1 – Bottom of Stage 3. Close enough that I got covered in dust a few times!

Timing Point at the bottom of Stage 3.

Sam Hill punctured coming down one of the Stages. One of his closest rivals, Martin Maes, who had come down before him, was still at the stage finishing area when he came in and he immediately set about helping Sam to save as much time as possible.

This is how we roll!

Day 1 Stage 4 had some nice drops and a fast finish . . .

Over the finish line and signing autographs. Sam Hill and his buddy 🙂

At the end of the day it was Fiesta time!

Where we live and what we do.

EWS Zona Zero Weekend Highlights . . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrOkSyEo24A

Ainsa, which is the town around which the Zona Zero MTB trails have been created, has been voted a “Rural Tourism Capital” 🙂

Ainsa, and the areas surrounding it, have so many things to see & do that are spread over such a large area that even on a “busy” day you can hardly see anyone!

Mountains and amazing views, Abandoned villages, medieval Castles & Towns and over 1000 km of MTB trails …

We really are very happy to be living in such a beautiful area.

The people behind this really have done well!

Mrs Spekkie and I have taken a new and quite significant step on our “Big Adventure” 🙂

After a year of living on The Farm with Ramon & Rosa, which was fun & interesting to say the least, we have now moved 5km “down the hill” from Guaso to the pretty little town of Boltaña and into an apartment of our own.

We’re still close enough to easily carry on with whatever work we can do on our own dream property, but after a lot of consideration and with some “from an outside point-of-view” help from friends here, we came to the conclusion that we really needed to be able to offer some accommodation to people here asap.

My MTB guiding and her “picnics” have been going well – and now we are in a place that allows us to easily offer B&B to visitors.

It is nice to have our own space again, even as fond as we are of Ramon & Rosa, and were looking forward to hosting visitors and showing them this special part of the world.

Of course Rosa cried because 5km away is just soooo far away. But we’ve seen them every day since we took the keys to our own place and actually they’re ok. They know where we are and they know we’ll be back, hopefully soon, and into our own place as their neighbours.

Rode my first Spanish MTB race last Sunday. It was a cracker!

I’ll post about it on the Bike Forum . . .

I’ve been doing some more exploring. This time I’m checking out some of the routes the Enduro World Series used when it was here . . .

Took a ride up a Pista (Stone Track) that goes “the back way” from the small town of Boltaña where we’re living now, up towards the village of Campodarbe.

When the EWS was here the other week they climbed this pista on one of their stages. The views, as always, are amazing.

<div data-redactor=”1″>We’ve been in our new place for a couple of weeks now and Mrs Spekkie has now got it just how she likes it :-)</div>
<div data-redactor=”1″></div>
<div data-redactor=”1″>The place was rented “part furnished” but we’ve bought some of our own bits & pieces out of storage to finish it off. Living on the farm with Ramon & Rosa was fun but it really is nice to have our own space and our own “stuff” around us again.</div>
<div data-redactor=”1″></div>
<div data-redactor=”1″>Last night we had some friends around for dinner – including a new Dutch friend who’s just got back from walking the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage route (800km across northern Spain!) and Mrs Spekkie was able to cook and look after everyone from her own kitchen.</div>
<div data-redactor=”1″></div>
<div data-redactor=”1″>A lovely evening, food & wine and amazing stories of what it’s like to walk 800km is 5 weeks . . .</div>
<div data-redactor=”1″></div>
<div data-redactor=”1″>Now the Camino has been bumped up our “to-do” list a bit :-)</div>

Today was a lovely sunny late summer/early autumn day and this lunchtime I was out testing some new bits of route in preparation for guiding people.

Took the first pic up on the Ainsa Castle wall, then rode down a flight of steps afterwards. Second pic is a view point looking north towards the Pyrenees and France … beautiful as always.

On Friday we did a local walk up to the village of Sieste and back. A nice route, not too hilly, fully marked out and on good footpaths. Starts and finishes on the bridge at “La Gorga” (a popular river swimming spot on the edge of town).

The route was deserted and the sun was shining . . . . 🙂

 the sun was shining

Long may that continue, we’re camping up that way for the puente – cold and clear will do just fine!

A couple of days ago I did a nice “local” ride from home which included the Zona Zero Route 5 climb out of the back of Ainsa up to the top of the “Partara”. I’ve ridden it several times – it’s not too long or too technical and there are some nice flat “recovery” segments, but the bits that go up, really do go up.

Great fun and there are several ways back down to try out … . 🙂

No shortage of signposts here ….

Not jealous .. .

After a brief surprise cold snap, the sun is back out again today 🙂

The weather in November is normally very nice – the trees have started to change colour and the first snows have fallen up in the mountains.

Today I’m out testing more routes, finding good picnic-lunch spots and generally putting plans together for some epic days of riding in the Pyrenees.

Love my life!

“alpin

Member

Not jealous …

🙂

Looks hideous, flat, boring double track everywhere……

I’m not envious at all…..

Did a ride from Boltaña today that came along the river, looped through the Ainsa Castle and then climbed up to the “Partara”. Wanted to see how much snow had fallen to the north. Low cloud hid most the tops of the mountains, but there’s certainly some snow where the peaks were visible.

There are several descents from the Partara so I came down the “Partara Express” first time then did the climb again and came down the descent that was used in the recent Enduro World Series held in Ainsa in September.

Both descents are ace 🙂

Check out the Relive video . . .

https://www.relive.c…ew/g26369463706

When the Enduro World Series visited Ainsa in September a Jump was built at the end of Sundays Stage 7.

I see it’s still there  🙂

I think I gave a big sigh of relief when she finished

That’s the one!

Nice pic.

Last night was a “Pre-Christmas Fiesta” up in the Plaza of Ainsa Old Town.

A big bonfire in the middle of the square to keep everyone warm, buy an empty wine glass for €3 and then you walk around the plaza visiting the 20 odd tables of locally made wine for an evening of wine tasting.

It’s a tough job but someone has to do it – we need to learn what we can about the area we live in, including what they drink . . . .

Almost every family around here owns a vineyard of some description and this annual competition is a good opportunity for them to all get together and compare notes. The bottles of wine we taste from are numbered, but only one person knows which number belongs to which farmer – so it’s all anonymous until the end.

I was the designated driver . . . .