Travelling by Train

The first time we went to this area was a little bit further to the north, during the summer holidays of 2021. We wanted to visit Araia, because Tibor figured out that we could reach it in one day by train. We were planning to do that in May 2020 when Covid threw our plans in the water. What we knew then, to be able to reach it in one day, we needed to walk from Hendaye station to Irun station (so from France to Spain), about a 30 minutes walk. That first time we found out that there was also a metro like train running from Hendaye to Irun and San Sebastian.

Now we didn’t buy an abandoned village close to Araia, but a little further south. The closest station is 30 km from Bárcena, that is not reachable in one day by public transport from the Netherlands, because trains only stop there 3 times a day. It is possible to reach Miranda de Ebro or maybe even better, go to Vitoria / Gasteiz, because you can rent a car there.

These are the steps you have to take to get there by train (from Amsterdam cs):

take thalys to station Paris gare du Nord (3 hours 20 min)
walk (1 hour 15 min) to Paris gare Montparnasse or take the metro (0.5 hours)
take the TGV to Hendaye (4 hours 40 min)
take the Euskotren to San Sebastian (stop Amara Donostia, 35 min) and walk 10 minutes to San Sebastian train station.
take the train to Vitoria / Gasteiz (1.5 hours)

In Vitoria Gasteiz we rented a car several times via the app Amovens (https://amovens.com), where you can rent a car from private persons. It’s about an hour drive from Vitoria

Another option is to get off the TGV half an hour before Hendaye, in Biarritz and rent a car there. From there it is 2.5 hours driving to Bárcena.

In summer it is also possible to take the night train from Paris to Hendaye

The trip is quite fast untill you reach the border of Spain.

Luckily we have some good news there:.

Renfe and Adif are working on a high speed line between Hendaye and Madrid (via San Sebastian, Vitoria/Gasteiz and Burgos) .

Information about this on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Y

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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

El Vicino

In May we went to 'our' village to show it to the parents of Maaike. So we drove there and after a half our drive with a lot of corners we were a bit drowsy getting out of the car. And there stood a friendly man in blue overalls. He seemed Spanish we asked Maaike to talk to him. But she did not know what to say. So we looked at each other for a couple of minutes. Then he started to tell that the village is empty which we agreed upon off course. He also told that the village was being bought by some people. Maaike asked if she should reply and we said yes please do. After telling the we are the mysterious people we are buying the village he started to tell a lot of stories. His name is Gerardo. He was born in the village and now lives in Burgos and in the summer in Abajas. He knew about the buy because he owns a parcel of land and did not want to sell. He want to keep it for income and only wants to rent it out. So we talked about that for a bit and as we were interested in k

Finding the right pieces of land

When we first visited Bárcena de Bureba we where guided by the current owner Marcelino. As we where interested, we told him about our project Ardbol. We explained him that we needed about 5 to 10 hectares of land. He replied that it was no problem, he knew many farmers in the area. Soon we got an image of the land area (See image below) from Marcelino without any explanation but it looked promising. We assumed the black crosses where the pieces of land we could buy. When I checked it on the Spanish cadastral website some pieces where quite clear but some existed out of many small parts. After the price negotiation we where anxiously waiting on which pieces of land we could buy. In august we got a large zipfile with new information. As Yasmin could not open it and we where on mobiles we needed to wait until we where behind a computer, which of course added on to the tension. Finally we could open it. In it where 64 files. 60 of each house and 4 for the land. See the next image in whic

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