Cycling B&B in the foothills of the Pyrenees

[Bonus]

Woke up to snow this morning! Will take some photos of the mountains later today when we go out.

This is the first snow we've had since last year march!

 

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The weather on Wednesday . . . .

 

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The weather on Thursday . . . .

What a difference 24 hrs makes!

 

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I often work with our friend and neighbour "Ramon the Friendly Farmer", but today I was helping out a different farmer. A friend of Ramons called . . . Ramon. Well at least I won't have trouble remembering his name.

Today was a mid-winters day, The temperature was hovering around 15 degrees this afternoon and the sun was warm on my skin. Nothing like the 35 degrees plus that we get in summer, but certainly not bad for Winter.

It's a tough job, but someone has to do it . . . .

 

[Bonus]

It's been a while since I posted on my "Foothills of the Pyrenees" thread. . . I tend to post anything cycling related on my "The Pyrenees - Road Riding, Mountains Biking etc . . . . " thread.

So, here's an update:

We are currently living in the town of Boltaña (pronounced Boltanya) which is 4kms away from the village of Guaso, where our "Project" is, and 6kms from the town of Ainsa which is the center of "Zona Zero MTB Land".

We're renting a three bedroom apartment which gives us plenty of space for ourselves and a spare twin room for friends & family to come and visit us.

We plan to rent out the spare room with a breakfast thrown in "Air B&B style" (but not actually through Air B&B) for visitors in the summer.

I'm currently working everyday - splitting my time between one of the local campsites, several local farmers and my MTB guiding. The work is 99% out doors, the weather has been lovely - we have only had 1 wet day in about 9 weeks - and I get to look at the mountains whenever I want to.

We are preparing new paperwork for another trip to the banks regarding a loan for our Project and we are also looking into options based on Private Investment and/or Crowd Funding.

Meanwhile we're living the dream. Loving the food, the people and the weather. Learning the language. Discovering new places and making new friends . . . .

Best wishes to everyone . . .

Bonus.

 

[Starchivore]

I haven't been on this forum for ages- very nice to be back on and to see that your project is proceeding well and that you're having a good time out there

 

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We've had a rather wet Easter here in Spain. Not too bad where we are but in some areas down on the Spanish coast they have had floods. It seems to be a world wide thing this week - "Durban", where we used to go on holiday when we lived in South Africa, featured briefly on the Spanish national news last night!

Here in the mountains we don't seem to get any flooding. There is very little "flat land" for water to build up on. There are network of streams and rivers leading down to the lakes and the rivers are ancient and have cut themselves between rock, not soil, so they just fill up and move faster. It's quite amazing to see the rivers in the dry season compared to the same rivers in the wet season.

 

[Bonus]

Our heatwave continues . . . .

The sun is blazing when I finish work at 2:30 and we're having late afternoon temps of 37 / 38 degrees. Thankfully it cools nicely at night and we get to sleep ok.

We've been heading to the river every evening for a swim. There are so many places to swim that none of them ever get too busy. . . .

:-)

 

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Our swimming spot at 7:30pm last night . . .

 

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Now that "le Tour" is over, our afternoons & evenings will be free and we're going to be doing some more work up at our Project.

We're hoping to finish getting the sloping back garden terraced so that we can start using it!

:-)

 

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I spoke to Ramon the friendly farmer a couple of days ago about using a little piece of his land down by the river to grow our own Salads & Veggies next year. He has two vegetable gardens himself - one up at the house in Guaso and one down by the Rio Ara. Ours will be next to his so that we can help each other when necessary.

Looking forward to growing lots of stuff next year.

Everything they grow tastes so nice :-)

 

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This weekend, in fact starting last Thursday, it is "Fiesta Weekend" in Boltaña. There are street parties, bands in the evening and discos all night....

Typically there's a band on stage between 8pm and 10pm, then everything stops for a few hours for supper, then at 1am the dancing starts up again until 6am. They do this for 4 days straight. I say "they" because sadly I couldn't even if I wanted to! Zzzzzz

Tonight at midnight is the "end of weekend" firework show . . . we'll see if we can stay up that late and watch it.

Thankfully, because work for us has to carry on, all the party noise is some distance away from our rented apartment. The same thing goes for Guaso village where our Project is - the little Plaza is far enough away not to disturb us too much when they have their "all night parties" over their Fiesta weekend in early August.

 

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Seasonal working in Spain:

The weather here is starting to cool down a bit now as we head towards the end of Summer.

I've been working at the campsite for 6hrs a day, 7 days a week for nearly 5 months now and then MTB guiding in the afternoons or evenings whenever the opportunity arises. It's a lot of work but we have to earn it while we can. The campsite shuts at the end of September - it will take a few days to close it all down and then it'll just be a few days of maintenance during the off-season. I'll continue MTB guiding and start working with local farmers, including our neighbour Ramon, when they need me. . . .

 

[Bonus]

The last few we few weeks have been crazy busy - and it's going to get worse over the next few days! Can't complain at having work though :-)

I'm still working everyday at the campsite - I thought things were going to slow down in September but now that the school holidays are finished, all the people without children are visiting and tons of them are cyclists.

On top of that I've been either guiding people or training / trail-finding in the afternoons and then at night after I've been back to do the campsite "evening shift" (closing down the swimming pools etc) I'm trying to keep on top of paperwork, updates, answering guiding enquiries . . . .

Today and tomorrow in the afternoons I'll be joining Mrs Bonus, Ramon the friendly Farmer & Rosa up at the farmhouse to stomp the grapes they've all been picking from this years harvest.

And on top of everything, I've made good progress translating and updating our Dept. of Commerce Viability Study so that we can use it when talking to private investors about our Project. Just need to proof-read it once more to make sure it all makes sense . . . .

I guess we'll sleep in December when everything is finished!

 

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We had a few days of rain at the end of last week and over the weekend - first proper rain in months.

Once the sun came back out we could see that while it was raining down where we live, it had snowed up in the Alto-Pyrenees. No snow on the Pena Montenesa yet, but will be some soon I'm sure. . . . .

In the meantime, we're enjoying the sunshine . . . . :-)