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

Edukator – Reformed Troll

I reckon those new skills should include DIY. Clearing trails is all very well but it’s time you could be using to do stuff you’ll be paying slow-working tradesmen to do when they feel like it. Your priority should be getting rooms ready to let and people in them. Get stuck in! Both of you.

We’re ready to roll with our “DIY skills” Edukator. We’ve agreed with the builder that a lot of the work towards the end of the job we will do ourselves. Need the builder to do the big stuff first though . . . .

What more could you ask for?

A proper mountain? 😀

Vaguely serious answer, if you’re planning on marketing to roadies: a 450m climb isn’t really that much, what else have you got in a 30km radius from your place?

What more could you ask for?

A proper mountain?

Vaguely serious answer, if you’re planning on marketing to roadies: a 450m climb isn’t really that much, what else have you got in a 30km radius from your place?

haha – mogrim, sorry, I wasn’t clear. This is just the closest one to my house. The one almost in my back garden that I can go and play on whenever I get a spare hour to fill.

When we’re ready and if we decide to go down the Roadie route, I’ll talk about the proper mountains in the area. I’m sure there are a few . . .

🙂

When we’re ready and if we decide to go down the Roadie route, I’ll talk about the proper mountains in the area. I’m sure there are a few . . .

That sounds more like it! Might even persuade me to come and visit 🙂

@spekkie obviously a key thing for you will be airport access/logistics, I’ve already plugged the Paris/Spekie route into the Sat Nav and its a loooong drive. As per Doug at Basque MTB its a “fly only” options really.

Keep posting, always enjoy the updates.

what more could you ask for?

Keep going straight past Campodarbe, hang a left at Morcat and follow that road to its end. Hit a left there and arrive to your house from the south. I’m not a roadie but it’s a lovely, lovely road. Even in a big van and trailer!

Sorry I didn’t manage a beer this week, it was really, really busy. I’ll give you a shout, I’m back soon.

The roadies like their climbs….i vd been going out on the road bike on wednesdays and round here, inland from valencia, loads of roadies. Most seem to be on tours from uk operators so i d hook up with them. They seem to stay on the coast as accom cheaper and ride circuits inland. I reckon they follow the vuelta routes just so they can claim bragging rights and justify the cost.

Good luck btw, as said above get some money coming in to keep you going.

doug_basqueMTB.com – Member

Keep going straight past Campodarbe, hang a left at Morcat and follow that road to its end. Hit a left there and arrive to your house from the south. I’m not a roadie but it’s a lovely, lovely road. Even in a big van and trailer!

Sorry I didn’t manage a beer this week, it was really, really busy. I’ll give you a shout, I’m back soon.

Cheers Doug – I’ll try that. Catch you next time you’re over this way.

poolman – Member

Good luck btw, as said above get some money coming in to keep you going.

That’s the plan. If we can initially get a couple of rooms up and running then we will be happy. The rest will follow.

I started checking out the “Zona-Zero” MTB routes and Road Cycling in the area when we got here and we’ve always reported on local places of interest that we’ve visited – now we’ve started doing the same for local “Walks”.

Here are some pics from a walk we did last week. We started at the “Vultures Dinning Room” (2 mins outside of Ainsa), where we parked the car and we finished at “Partara” which is the viewing point up on the hill that Angel from Zona-Zero dragged a bench up to!

It took us about an hour each way at a casual pace. We climbed from 600m to 859m and we saw lots of birds of prey on the way – from below and later from above! Very impressive but very hard to take pictures or video of!

The Vultures Dinning Room is, as the name implies, a place where local meat companies drop off meat to help feed the local Vulture population (they often “hover” over me when I’m climbing on the MTB!).

Vultures and a variety of Eagles/Kites/Hawks are all indigenous to the area – but I’ll talk about that in another post . . .

The view from the top is magnificent. It’s not too hard to get to by foot or by bike (it’s on Zona- Zero Route 5) and you can sit down at the top and have a picnic.

The Vultures Dinning Room is, as the name implies, a place where local meat companies drop off meat to help feed the local Vulture population (they often “hover” over me when I’m climbing on the MTB!).

Lots of vultures in central Spain, too – saw quite a few just this weekend in fact. Quite disconcerting when you’re dragging yourself up a hill, you know they’re just hoping… 😆

March 25th and it suddenly snowed! Two days previously I was working in the sun with shorts and a T-shirt on, one day previously we were hibernating because it suddenly got cold … and then this!

Our snow only lasted a day or two on the ground down here in town, although I can see that there is still plenty up on the slopes of the mountains.

This guy is hanging around “just in case” I guess.

This clip of Peter Sagan riding the Stage 7 Time Trial at Tirreno-Adriatico (2017) reminded me of something we noticed when we got to Spain.

In the UK if you want to cross the road on a Zebra Crossing you walk up to the edge of the pavement, look both ways and very quickly cars will stop for you and you can cross safely.

In South Africa if you want to cross the road on a Zebra Crossing you walk up to the edge of the pavement, look both ways . . . wait for a gap in the traffic and run like hell. Safety is for sissies.

In Spain if you want to cross the road on a Zebra Crossing you walk up to the edge of the pavement whilst concentrating intently on your phone. Without looking either way you may walk straight out onto the crossing. It is the total responsibility of the vehicle driver to see you and to stop. There is no such things as “I couldn’t stop in time”. You must stop in time, end-of 🙂

On the plus side – when you are the pedestrian the same rules apply 🙂

The more French cars the more you have to look 🙂 🙂

I’ve been watching this thread with interest since it started.

Just a few weeks ago we started thinking about doing something similar, buying a place to spend a bit of time in ourselves and maybe letting it out at others. We haven’t even got to the planning stage but we booked a couple of return flights to Girona next week to have a look around.

I’d be interested if anybody has anything to tell us about that area and the feasibility. We’re both semi-retired and I spend most of the time doing up houses in the UK to rent, and making fitted bedrooms, studies and other mostly fitted furniture on a self-employed basis. So as long as I can get my hands on an adapter plug I’m fairly handy with the renovation work.

This morning we met with the bank manager, who helped us prepare our responce to some enquiries from the banks head office “Risk Dept”. Then later we spoke on the phone with the nice lady at the risk office answering what are hopefully their last few questions. Tomorrow I have to check a couple of things with the builder and get the answers back to the risk dept.

Edit: I might actually phone the lady at the risk dept. from the builders house while I’m there and let them speak to each other!

#finalfewhurdles

Well, we’ve finally become legit. Yesterday we had an appointment to register as resident in Cataluña, the process involves assembling every single bit of paperwork we’ve collected since moving here 18 months ago and taking it to the police station to be checked. Our first try was last week when we simply rocked up in our local town, Tortosa, with all our papers. We were told to sit in the waiting room while a steady stream of people came and went, we assumed they were applying for Passports and DNI numbers. After about an hour a policemen came over and asked what we wanted. We explained that we were there to get Residencia, he said oh you need an appointment which can only be made on line and not available until next week!! Oh how we laughed.
So we returned yesterday having made the appointment, paid our fee and gone to the bank to get proof of payment. We also needed proof from the bank that we were solvent.
We marched into the police station, full of confidence, 5 minutes later we were ushered to the clerk who started going through our papers. Heath insurance? Check, we both got out or medical cards for which we pay €70 a month each. No I need the policy and proof you have paid the premium up to date
Shit, that’s at home and as we do online banking, there’s no monthly paperwork. Cue racing the 40 minutes home whilst on the phone to the bank to get them to print the relevant receipts.
We got back with everything about 20 minutes before the clerk went for the day and she was willing to issue our little green cards which replace our tatty photocopied NIE forms which should have been changed 3 months after we moved here.
Happy days!!

Another step in the right direction PB! Have you done your “long ride” yet?

We start from Tarragona next Friday, 1,000km to Bilbao off-road, self supported, should be fun. I’ve also entered the Pirinexus on 3rd of June, 350km in 20 hours from Girona over the Pyrenees and back into Spain on gravel roads and off road cycleways. I must be mad. Trish won her category in the double olimpic race last weekend and has an Ironman in 4 weeks. Think we’ll need a bit of beach time in July.

Zona Zero Route 5. Towards the end there’s some nice single-track and then a bit of a drop . . . .

Being an XC rider, I haven’t ridden the drop yet but the single track was cool. One day I’ll ride the whole lot I’m sure 🙂

We’ll have you down that in September 😆

Looking forward to it PD! Hoping to have a room for you 🙂

Worked with Ramon the friendly farmer on the farm this morning for a while and then did some trail-clearing on the “variation” part of Route 3 Light / Route 9 which goes past our front door.

I do love my “office”

Trail Clearing today with Angel and his dogs above the village of Escalona, just north of Ainsa. The trail passes the abandoned hilltop village of Muro de Bellos.

A good days work – I will go back in the week and test the trail 🙂

Trail building with Angel & David up in the hills above Morrillo de San Pedro yesterday.

Sometimes you have to do some “trail clearing” just to get to where you want to do some trail clearing!

Yesterday was mostly breaking and shifting rocks. Hard work, but it is a fantastic piece of single track – I look forward to trying it soon!

Zona Zero have added a new route to their collection. Route number ZZ-032.

This route runs north from Fiscal (which is west of Ainsa), alongside the river Ara and is categorised as difficulty “Red”.

🙂

Full details here:
Zona Zero

Link doesn’t seem to be working?
Been dipping into this thread over preceding months & really enjoying it. Great pics up above. As a wheels on the ground type of guy this is a lot more appealing to me than much of the gnarr stuff that often features!
Keep up the good work.

dying to get down to ZZ, we were going to do a weeks’ camping there at easter but followed the better weather to France in the end. It’s only about three hours’ drive away from here. I’ve got an MTBing mate down in Girona, so it’s conveniently half-way for a meetup in summer!

Any recommended campsite around there, OP?

onlysteel – Glad you’re enjoying it 🙂

Try this link:
Zona Zero Home Page

bob summers – there are several local camp sites. I’ll look in on them today while I’m out and about and let you know how they fare . . . .

Had my first road ride in a while on Thursday evening.

The sun isn’t setting now until past 9:30pm and the evenings are warm and beautifully clear. Mrs Spekkie prefers to ride mornings.

The local roads, which are all in very good condition, are quiet and the drivers are considerate and courteous. We rarely have a car pass us that isn’t so far away that it’s over on the other side of the central line. If there isn’t space to pass us safely then the cars wait until it is. No close passing, no horns or verbal abuse.

What a pleasure . . . .

🙂

Thanks Spekkie, appreciated. We spend most of July & August up and down the north coast but I’m trying to convince the family to come up to the mountains, at least for a week or so.

On Sunday I rode with some of the Zona Zero guys – Angel, Rafa, David and Kiko on the new route that we’ve been clearing and building recently. We fitted a few signs but apart from that it was just “ridin.”

Most of the route was rideable on my Epic but on occasions I had to get off and climb over rock obstructions. Angel, David & Rafa rode 99% of the route, Kiko and I were “brothers in slowness” on the descents but I held my own on the climbs 🙂

Rafa supplied transport to take us and our bikes up into the hills and then we all rode along the ridge and back down into Ainsa – via several inhabited/uninhabited villages, fetching the transport vehicle and trailer a bit later on. (It’s nice that you can leave a Merc Combi and Trailer in the middle of nowhere for 8 hrs and it’s still there when you go back for it!)

Beautiful scenery & views, hard but rewarding climbs, wicked singletrack and some demanding descents. A fantastic day with good mates. Perfect.

The details of the new Enduro/XC Tech route (# ZE12) have been released on the Zona Zero website.

http://bttpirineo.com/es/rutas-btt-pirineo/ze12-maxi-piojo-1

All in Spanish I’m afraid but copy & paste to “Google translate” works well!

It’s the route built recently and tested last weekend. I really enjoyed it – although it was beyond my expertise level in places, everyone else seemed to manage 😉

There are a couple of Variations available (shown on the map) and several others that I know about that are not on the map . . . . inside information for people that come and stay with us when we open 🙂

Mrs Spekkie and I have moved into a new phase of our “Adventure”.

At the end of May, after a lot of consideration, we moved out of our rented apartment in Ainsa and into a wing of Ramon the Friendly Farmer & Rosa’s Farmhouse – which is very close to our own property in Guaso.

They have been on at us for ages to move in with them – I think they’ve actually adopted us now. I expect the paperwork is in the post. . . .

It will be very convenient when building work finally starts on our Project (I’ll cover that point in a separate post) and in the meantime it is convenient for me working on the Bike Park that we are building on Ramon’s land next to our house.

It was less than a 10 minute drive from Ainsa to Guaso but by the time you get from the apartment down to the car etc etc it makes “popping over to do an hours work” very inefficient. This will be much better . . .

Plus it’s nice to be close to our own place 🙂

🙂

You kept this “Bike Park” quiet, or maybe I just haven’t been keeping up to date properly 😀

You have been paying attention but you have a bad memory PD!

When I talked about the Bike Park originally you asked whether it would join up with any of the Zona Zero trails . . . and I said yes, it is very close to where several routes pass.

I’m building it for when we have families or less experienced riders visit us and Zona Zero is a bit “too much” for them.

Keep well mate.

On Friday myself, Angel, William (from France) and Matty (from Argentina) accompanied as usual by Golfo, Lili & Lolitta, cleared & repaired an old trail between Morcat and Castellazo.

At its highest point it is around 1200m above sea level and from up there the views are stunning. It was a hot day and hard work – but it shouldn’t need doing again now for quite some time at least 🙂