Cycling B&B in the foothills of the Pyrenees

[Bonus]

Last Tuesday we visited the local municipal architect and she told us that our Planning Permission License was passed and that she would post it to us on Thursday, registered post. (She only works Tuesdays and Thursdays)

By this morning, a week after it was posted, we still hadn't received the letter and we were worried that we had missed the postman (for signing) so this morning we went to the architects office to check on things.

Apparently the letter hasn't been posted yet because the architect hasn't signed it off.

Seriously, these people would test the patience of a Saint!

:-(

#hotimpressed

 

[ColinJ]

"Mañana ..."

 

[Bonus]

Si.

 

[Bonus]

A good way to get the bottom half of your car buffed up in Ainsa town :-)

View: https://youtu.be/ednrvcjWwRk

 

[Bonus]

We went to see the municipal architect today to chase up our planning application - which she had said she would send out by post nearly two weeks ago.

She was very apologetic and gave excuses of having been at meetings in other areas of the district but promised that if we go back tomorrow just before close of business (2pm on a Friday) she will personally give us the signed license in our hand.

We told her we'd be back tomorrow but in fact we are going to Zaragoza tomorrow for the day so it will be Monday before we go in and fetch it. Better that she expects us tomorrow though . . . .

;-)

 

[Bonus]

Last week Angel (from Zona-Zero, Ainsa) and I checked out an old disused & overgrown path, around about 1.5km long, near the village of Torrelisa. He wanted to clean It up to provide an alternative downhill run on Route 7.

The first thing we did was walk the path to see how bad it was (it was bad!) and whether it could be turned back into a useable bike trail or not (It could).

Then this week we went back with tools and started work. Stage 1 consists of cutting and removing the biggest branches with the use of a chainsaw and clearing the bigger fallen rocks off the whole length of the path. Stage 2 sees us doing a second pass for the smaller bushes and branches with a petrol strimmer (weed-eater) and clearing away the debris and any smaller stones we missed the first time.

Today halfway down the path we discovered an old natural spring that riders can use for drinking water :-)

Some "Before and During" Pics of Angel and his three dogs . . .

km

 

[Bonus]

Found this bridge just off "Route 6 Light" the other day. You would use it if the weir just upstream of here became submerged due to a high river water-level.

You can see here how wide the river bed is and it looks like it's too wide. A few hours heavy rain up in the mountains though and this boulder strewn dry riverbed becomes a torrent . . .

:-)

 

[Bonus]

 

[ColinJ]

Looks great!

You can see here how wide the river bed is and it looks like it's too wide. A few hours heavy rain up in the mountains though and this boulder strewn dry riverbed becomes a torrent . . .

I used to think that some of the storm drains I saw on the Costa Blanca looked a bit OTT, with mere trickles or no water at all in them. Then I heard about THIS TRAGEDY in the area!

 

[Bonus]

We have our Building License! Finally. We went and signed for it today at the municipal architects office. Now we can move forward. What a relief . . . .

It is officially time to break out the champagne!

:-)

 

[ColinJ]

We have our Building License! Finally. We went and signed for it today at the municipal architects office. Now we can move forward. What a relief . . . .

It is officially time to break out the champagne!

:-)

Cava, surely!

 

[Bonus]

Looks great!


I used to think that some of the storm drains I saw on the Costa Blanca looked a bit OTT, with mere trickles or no water at all in them. Then I heard about THIS TRAGEDY in the area!

There was a terrible flood through a campsite in Biescas, about an hour from here, back in the 90's. Flash flood. Funnily enough it's where we went to watch the Giro go past in September.

 

[ColinJ]

There was a terrible flood through a campsite in Biescas, about an hour from here, back in the 90's. Flash flood. Funnily enough it's where we went to watch the Giro go past in September.

The storm drainage channels going down to the sea near Altea have been landscaped and have footpaths on them. Not a problem when they get the usual slow build-up in water level, but as the Finestrat and Biescas examples prove, sometimes a wall of water comes rushing down ...!

 

[Bonus]

Yesterday we had a meeting with our architect, Pedro Miguel. He went over our Building License with us (3 A4 pages of legal Spanish, obviously) to check that everything is in order. There were no surprises. We have to start the project within a year and finish within three years of the license being issued. If we need an extension after that we can apply for one - that's quite common. The property should be built "as shown on our drawings". Published safety guidelines must be followed by the contractor on site. Don't unduly interfere with the neighbours etc.

Of course we now have a fee to pay - calculated as a percentage of the cost of the total works. A percentage of this fee is government tax.

In some cases the percentage of tax can be reduced - "for rehabilitation of ancient buildings that fall within special council guidelines". Our building is not special in that way (although it is very special to us) so we get no reduction. On the plus side though, buildings that fall under that "special" heading with the council can only have certain modifications made to them. We would rather pay the full fee and get the finish we want than pay a little less tax but not be allowed to do "this or that" with our building. . . .

 

[Bonus]

Managing in Spain while learning Spanish . . . .

Neither of us are fluent in the Spanish language but by now (here for 9 months) we speak enough to get by day-to-day with all the usual "casual" stuff.

Before leaving South Africa we had 10 1hr lessons with a great guy from Colombia (which we now wish dearly we'd tried harder at!!). Since getting here we've continued teaching ourselves by using lessons found on the web etc and of course by talking to people around us who can only speak Spanish.

We mostly manage ok with the easy stuff - you do have to use a bit of imagination with the phone translators, they are not perfect. For the more important/official things we found ourselves bilingual people. Our solicitor and financial advisor speaks pretty good English. Our architect the same. Between us with our basic Spanish and them with their basic English we do ok.

As far as the actual learning goes, it's easy enough to learn a couple of hundred words. Verbs, Nouns & Adjectives etc. The difficulty comes with putting them into a sentence that follows the rules of Spanish language and so makes sense to a Spaniard.

You get a good idea of the structure of Spanish by listening to a Spanish person speak "bad" English. When they make mistakes with the word order of English it's because they are translating from a Spanish sentence word by word. Equally if we translate an English sentence into Spanish word by word it will be "understandable" but poorly constructed.

We say "the blue car", they say "the car blue". We say "short trousers" they say "trousers short". Once you understand this rule it's not too hard to get it right. Tenses are more complicated as are some of the masculine/feminine associations.

On the other hand there are some words that are easy to remember because there's only a single letter change, like:

Guy/Girl is Chico/Chica
Son/Daughter is Hijo/Hija
Brother/Sister is Hermano/Hermana . . . . .

:-)