Also, employing Spanish builders will make you very familiar with the concept of ” mes o minus” nothing can be done to alter this phoenomenon. 😀

I’m already familiar with that “phrase”.

I will be holding onto the purse strings tightly and I will be on site all day myself doing the garden. So I won’t be interested in any nonsense from Mr Sanchez and his mates.

un Saludo

We asked three different builders to quote us on our building project and they are starting to get back to us with prices now. We have a meeting on Friday morning with the first builder we talked to. The other two are not far behind.

It has taken longer than I expected for them to put their quotes together, but they are quoting everything from the new roof on top down to the water service trenches from the street at the bottom . . . and everything in-between.

We should also hear from the municipality this week regarding planning permission. When I spoke to them recently they said that everything was going well and the council architect was happy apart from a small question that needed to be cleared up with our architect.

Slowly but surely . . . . . Meanwhile, to keep ourselves busy, Mrs Spekkie is practising her recipes on me and I’m doing what I can at the house in preparation.

🙂

8)

Well done on this. I live in Spain and just shop around for the building work, use skilled labour for skilled jobs and a peon for the grunt work. I have actually enjoyed the running around pricing up materials.

I may get over your way at the end of summer on my touring bike so will let you know. I have explored the ordessa canyon area and cycletoured the area before.

Good luck in the venture, email me if u want to know anything I wouldn’t want to post on a public forum…

Cheers Poolman. I’ve dropped you a mail.

Check the legals carefully…
My wife’s cousin bought a property in Portugal to do up. It turned to have been built without planning permission. To cut a long story short, she lost everything and ended up back in the UK homeless. Along the way her English builder stole many of the nice fittings and new materials she’d paid for – then buggered off.
She didn’t speak the language, and as a single woman in a Mediterranean country it seemed like everyone was out to rip her off, including lawyers and accountants 🙁

Cheers IDD – our place was built around 200 years ago and has deeds etc all in order.

IDD, that’s a terrible story, sadly not uncommon in Spain and Portugal. Italy neither as planning permission takes 10 years so people just build stuff anyway and deal with the consequences later.

That’s a terrible story about the Portugese property, the first thing the estate agent told us was to ensure anything we bought had a habitation certificate, this goes a long way to securing your rights. It seems a lot of the horror stories involve property in urbanaciones on the coast in the south, notably Valencia, Alicante and the Costa Del Sol. North West Spain, especially inland, seems less susceptible to people acting like it’s the Wild West.

As a side note to IDD’s story (re the English builder/thief), 3 years ago when we first started investigating moving to Spain etc I was saddened to read that the people most likely to try and rip you off if you relocated to Spain were “the Brits already there”.

Going out to the French Pyrenees tomorrow, close to the Andorra border.

A friend bought a shed there 3 yrs ago and has slowly been doing it up. He hasn’t really come across many issues at all.

Cracking Thread 🙂
Would love to do the same thing in Galicia..

We’ve had a good couple of weeks. . . .

Last week we stopped at a pavement cafe for coffee and got talking to a couple from Colorado in the US who were touring the area and had hired an MTB each. We ended up riding together on some of the local Zona Zero trails around Ainsa. It was good for me to get out with other riders for a change – usually I ride MTB alone. They have taken our details and they are watching our “blog”. They’ve also given me the details of a business local to them that does MTB tours with a view to sending people our way once we’re up and running 🙂 We rode up to our place and they had a good look around – they plan to come back next year and spend more time here in Ainsa and less time touring around.

Aside from a few days of good riding I’ve been spending my time with the continued job of “taming the garden” whilst Mrs Spekkie practices her recipes for Tapas dishes, and we’re both still trying to learn Spanish.

We’re still waiting for our planning permission application to come back from the council but in the meantime we’ve had a quote back from the first of the three builders we’ve talked to.

Slowly but surely, we’re getting there . . . .

Coming to this thread late, but please tell me someone has tipped of Kevin McCloud.

Ha! So many friends of our told us to talk to Grand Designs!

I agree with them. Free publicity, the build documented for prosperity and the chance to be on telly.

Just keep Kev away from your missus 😉

A good couple of weeks and you didn’t even mention the snail festival 🙂

It’s a great spot you have and that trail from your house to Ainsa is one of my favorites, proper rocky fun! See you soon.

A good couple of weeks and you didn’t even mention the snail festival

It’s a great spot you have and that trail from your house to Ainsa is one of my favorites, proper rocky fun! See you soon.

The snails were nice weren’t they! But better than that was the craft beer. Was great to catch up Doug – see you again soon for a bit more Brain-Picking I’m sure!

Good to read that you’re getting out on the bike, it’s easy to get bogged down with the renovation and loose the real reason for being there. We haven’t plucked up courage to try snails yet, I thought Lleida was the greatest snail festival in Spain?
Doug, I don’t know if you remember me, you kindly lent my mate a rear wheel when his hope free hub disintegrated on a trans Pyrenees trip we did 3 years ago, delivering it 100+ miles from your place was above and beyond.
Once the CAT700 is ticked off I’m hoping to get up to the Ainsa area, just need to get the training in as 5 days self supported over 650km and 13000m of climbing is going to be a challenge.
Good luck Spekkie and hopefully see you soon.

PB – For sure. Give us a shout!

blog?

We’ve finally had the first part of our planning permission application approved! 🙂

We now have permission to connect to the municipal fresh water and waste water systems in the street. I’ll get digging tonight after dark . . . . 😉

Is there a blog?

Today we visited the council offices to chase up our outstanding planning permission application . . . . and we were given a letter of “points that need addressing before the application can be passed” . . . . dated 16th APRIL!

We should have been given it 7 weeks ago!

We’ve passed it on to our architect, who promptly rang the council office and demanded to know “what they were playing at”. So, now the architect can modify the drawings to suit the local area guidelines and then they can be re-submitted.

Finally some progress, but not impressed with a council office where everyone thought that “someone else had done it”

🙂

Welcome to Spain 😉

I feel your frustration. Can I refer you to my earlier comments about Spanish bureaucracy, glacial would describe the sense of urgency. 😕 It seems that many people just do the work and sort it out later which is a mistake, especially if they want to sell in the future and the changes aren’t documented in the escatura or nota simple. In the worst case the ajuntament can require alterations to be undone or the value of them cannot be recouped.
Are you on mains electric? We are powered by solar and generators as the cost of connection is huge. A chap locally has a line of telegraph poles which run literally 10m from his house and was quoted €23,000 for connection, we’re a lot further off grid than that!
Mrs PB has Facebook friended you, I’m not into FB. She is talking about us having a trip up north later in the summer, I’ll let you know when.

Clobber – Member
Is there a blog?

Sorry Clobber – missed your question . . .

This is a blog . . . . but we are also on FB:
“Tony & Andreas Big Adventure”

PB – TGM?

We’re going to plod on doing things properly, will just have to keep a close eye on the builders once they start. I’ll be on site myself so won’t be too difficult.

Hi Tony, yes it’s TGM, also you might think about putting an apostrophe between the a and s in Andrea as it might seem to us pedants that you bat for the other side, and with a German to boot 🙂

Hi Spekkie,

sounds like a dream project ! i live in Madrid and had 3 unrelated thoughts while reading through the thread. Just to throw out there…

1. Check out this website if you haven’t already. http://www.toprural.com it gives a sense of the competition and market value. Domestic tourism in Spain is big and the concept of spending a weekend in a casa rural is popular.

2. Zona Zero is reasonably well known among Spain’s mountain bikers (although not quite as famous as Vallnord but still). You could do worse than target Madrid / Barcelona / Bilbao based mountain bikers looking for a long weekend away. Check out http://www.foromtb.com/ if you haven’t already.

3 This is a long shot but you might be able to get some business from the Summer Camp business. Middle class spanish kids all go to summer camp for 2 weeks over the summer – often out in the sticks somewhere. Adding English is an additional attraction. when i first arrived in Spain i taught English at a summer camp run by real Madrid football club for rich kids – the kids only wanted to play football but the organisers added English lessons to sweeten it for the parents. An English mountain biking camp could have a certain niche appeal. Although I’ve no idea what the regulation / insurance etc would be like.

PB – lol there is an apostrophe on the FB title. I was just being lazy last night.

Dang – good points, thanks. I will have a look. We have already been asked by several people if we will have their kids/teenagers for a week or two during holidays with the proviso that if they don’t speak English to us, they don’t eat! There is certainly a market for this sort of thing.

One of the things I’m really enjoying here, and missed badly when I was in South Africa for the last 8 years or so . . . . riding in daylight late on a warm summer evening! 🙂

In SA in summer we were getting up and out on the bikes by 6am. Much after 9 or 10am it was just too hot to still be out riding. It was a way of life I got used to and enjoyed . . . but I always missed going out for a ride at 7 or 8pm at night and getting home 2 hours later and it was still light.

The middle of the day here can be very hot – hence the idea of a post lunch “Siesta”, which is a tradition we’ve adopted with much enthusiasm! But the evenings are fantastic. Hit the trails any time after 7pm at this time of year and you can enjoy a lovely warm ride, the evening views across the mountains & valleys etc and still get home in daylight. No lights, no arm warmers, and riding until 10pm! What more could I ask for . .. ?

🙂

Kind of obvious point but I’d wait to make sure we will still be in the EU before putting all my eggs in that basket. What happens if they decide to bump up the tax on foreign property owners? Charge for medical care. Etc etc etc??

Yes good point if UK leaves Europe as I live in Spain and was asked yesterday what happens if we vote out. Strangely I am not hearing many expats talking about it so it’s probably denial and or most expats here have kept houses in their home countries.

I think if I only had 1 home in a foreign country I d be a bit worried,ie.nowhere to go if we vote out.

Good luck btw I will have a look at your Facebook page

I’ll watch out for you poolman 🙂

Exploring Zona Zero trails today and they are awesome!

Will try to post some pics later 🙂

An old school friend of mine from my days as a kid in South Africa has come to visit 🙂

He and his wife, who live in the UK now and tour around France for two weeks every year, have stopped by at a local campsite with their Camper Van (a mode of transport we will be discouraging once our B&B is up and running!!) so today we will take them out and show them some sights.

Will be nice to catch up 🙂

Yes good point if UK leaves Europe as I live in Spain and was asked yesterday what happens if we vote out. Strangely I am not hearing many expats talking about it so it’s probably denial and or most expats here have kept houses in their home countries.

Most of us realise it’s out of our hands, and “qué será, será”. The worst that could realistically happen in my case would be having to apply for Spanish nationality. Which of course means running the gauntlet of Spanish bureaucracy, and as you’ve already seen:

Finally some progress, but not impressed with a council office where everyone thought that “someone else had done it”

(It’s no better at national level…)

Still, well done for getting so far!

Sounds good Spekkie!

Many articles that I have read, which agree with common sense, says that those living in another EU country to their nationality before the vote will more than likely be entitled to such privileges after the vote due to a pre-existing situation.

As a british passport holder with a british passport holder son a french passport holder daughter and a french passport holder wife living in France and resident here for tax purposes, I suddenly had a panic then did some reading and am now fairly relaxed about it.