Cycling B&B in the foothills of the Pyrenees

[Bonus]

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!" (which is pretty much the FB version of this thread)

https://www.facebook...18185251605562/

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 Bonus 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 :-) Saturday was 55km, 1033meters of climbing and a max temp of 37 degrees C. The average temp was quite a bit lower thankfully.

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 show then 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 Bonus and Rosa the Farmers Wife - who was very happy to have 5 "Guapo Hombres" (good looking young guys) in her kitchen while Ramon the friendly Farmer 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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Saturday & Sundays Rides. Was a fantastic weekend!

https://www.relive.c...ew/g13978627978

https://www.relive.c...ew/g14017666568

 

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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 Bonus wants herbs growing here next to the back door for when she's cooking :-)

 

[Bonus]

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 :-)

 

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A few more . . .

 

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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 . . .

 

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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 . . . .

:-)

 

[Bonus]

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 . . . .

 

[Bonus]

This Saturday is the Zona Zero race - "La Batalla Del Inframundo" (The Battle of the Underworld) in Ainsa, Spain.

This promo video shows you the views from one of the highest points of the race followed by one of the descents. Not sure who the rider is but he's having fun!

:-)

I really am happy to be living in such a beautiful place!

 

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Mrs Bonus Road Riding between Ainsa and Campo.

A beautiful day, little traffic and fantastic scenery . . . .

 

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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 Bonus 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 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

 

[rich p]

I didn't realise what an ambitious project you'd given yourselves till I saw the pictures a few posts above.
Good luck!
And hurry up or I'll be too old to come and join you!

 

[Bonus]

I didn't realise what an ambitious project you'd given yourselves till I saw the pictures a few posts above.
Good luck!
And hurry up or I'll be too old to come and join you!

:-)

 

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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!


View attachment 376151

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 . . . .

 

[Bonus]

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!