Found, the unfindable ghost town

With Bárcena de Bureba we have found something unfindable. Which sounds impossible but it is true.

Bárcena cannot be found on google maps. When searching on Google you will find a place in Spain but somewhere in the middle of nowhere. See the image on the right. And we all know if Google cannot find it, it does not exist!

As you can see this is not a village and not even an empty village but just some meadow. In the left panel Google recognizes the village as a ghost town with images which actually are from the actual village.

Here you see one of the broken houses with graffiti on it. This is from the real Bárcena and not the above location in the meadows.

All the way at the bottom you find the Ghost town label. In the search bar google gives it a zip code of 09410.

A funny detail is that there are 6 reviews and they seem to be very happy with the empty town as it has an average of 4.3 stars.

But if you want to visit, do not drive to this location as you will not find the village.

Instead when I search on Bárcena de Bureba, Bárcena de Bureba, Spain I do get the right location. See below. Here we do not end in a meadow, but in the village which has the right name. It is also labeled as Ghost town and has the zip code 09141. Which is just slightly different from 09410 from above.

This search result has one more review and a whooping 4.4 stars. One last funny detail: you can search on 'Restaurants', 'Hotels or 'Things to do' but that will give you zero results.

Although there is nothing to do we often have found people wandering around. A Ghost town has its attractiveness.

Google has an automatic system to signal errors which I tried to use. But you cannot move a town so I have send them a message. Unfortunately so far there has not been an answer.

So as a second option I have added a full address of a house in Bárcena and now you can search on that full address, but the error of searching on the village name only is still here.

I hope when we will live there the error is corrected and nobody will drive to the wrong location as it is about two hours drive to get from Bárcena de Bureba, 09410, Burgos, Spain to Bárcena de Bureba, 09141 Bárcena de Bureba, Burgos, Spain.

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The first week of work

After the transaction we had time to think about what we could do in the village, as now we are the owners. The next option for us to go to Spain was in the autumn holidays. Earlier on we tried to combine it with Spanish classes for the kids, but we couldn’t arrange extra free time from school, so we had to stick to the one week of school vacation. We thought about starting at one of the houses which is in the relative good condition, like getting a door, so we could close it and store stuff there. But we had no electricity or tools as we had no space to keep stuff safe. So we were kind of stuck in a chicken and egg problem. To get out of this we set up a plan to get a container which we could lock. But that would not be there for this vacation. Then Maaike’s parents asked: “Would it be of any use if we were there with some tools to clear away the burrs, bushes and so on?” Of course that would be great! We were happy that they were enthusiastic and by itself there was a plan to do ...

Todo

We are looking forward to our next vacation in August. We have a substantial list of things we can do and are now busy preparing everything for it. We have made a list of all the things we need to prepare based on this list of things we want to do: WC/shower hut - an outdoor space made of clay and stone as a toilet and shower Creating paths - many walking paths are difficult to traverse and need to be cleared Building a clay wall - to practice, we want to build a clay wall Building a stone wall - to practice, we want to build a stone wall Making stairs - there needs to be a staircase to get from the container to the romantic forest Planting trees - there are 120 Paulownia trees that need to be planted Connecting solar panels - we want to have 10 solar panels on the container and another 8 by our house Building a room - in the main house and our house, we can build a room Making an outdoor kitchen - along the container, an outdoor kitchen needs to be made Clearing stones ...

Never alone in an abandoned village

One might expect that being in an abandoned village will be lonely. But a part from Carlos and all the people who we knew were going to visit us, everyday there were people visiting the village. let's start with the people we knew were going to visit us in order of appearance. Mirthe, Rick and Vos who came visiting with their camper to find out if they want to live in Bárcena and to help us some days. They are now in the process of preparing to move to Bárcena so it seems that the answer is yes! Maaike's Brother Teun, his wife Marieke and daughter Sarah , who were there for 2 weeks and took a lot of trips with the kids and cooked for us almost every day! But most important: they really liked being there, so hopefully they will come often when we live there. As an ultra runner Teun explored the area by running and cycling. For example he explored routes to Lences and found three different ones. Tibor's daughter Fiona , who helped a lot with ...

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