Never alone in an abandoned village

One might expect that being in an abandoned village will be lonely. But apart 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 all the stuff we were doing and loved it as well, mostly driving around with the excavator. I think she regretted that she booked for only a couple of day's!

Sanny and Christophe, who also came camping to find out if they want to live in Bárcena and also decided to stay some days longer when they saw our long to do list. We hope their answer will be yes, as it was nice working together

                                                           

Alfredo and his wife, because we are going to buy their properties in the village. And they were in the village several times to pick the plums.
One day they were visited to talk about de sale, we thought they just wanted to talk about the price and the date. They showed us some papers, we thought were purchase agreements when they bought it, but turned out that one was a special one, a 'contrato privado' and therefore we couldn't buy that plot.

I like to think my Spanish is quite good, but when I don't know the context it can go wrong (and probably that I am not a good listener also doesn't help). So we still can use the land but to buy it officially will be complex or impossible.

Dorien and her friends that are organizing the poetry festival and were having lunch while preparing the festival.

And of course Maaike's parents, who came cleaning the streets, which was very needed, since everything grew very hard since May and most streets we could not walk anymore.

 

Of the people we didn't knew, one is a very familiar to us: Gerardo, who was born in Bárcena. One day he took Carlos and Maaike on a tour to visit the manantial close to the river. But also he showed us another one closer to Abajas (where we probably have the permit for) and he told us a lot about plants we saw on the road and their medicinal properties. Even Carlos learned a lot.

 People who were interested in the Paulownias.

One guy wanted to buy a couple. But after Carlos told him what should be done before, during and after planting, he decided to do some more research before buying.

Another guy, Gonzales from the city Burgos, who came helping us one day with the planting. Which was luckily for us, because the oil of the excavator was finished and at that time we didn't know how to refill yet. So Gonzales helped planting by hand.

 And then there was Ricardo, he visited Bárcena one day and was very interested in everything we were doing there and also knows a lot about food forests in theory. He lives in Madrid but was working online in Burgos for the summer, because it is less warm. Later he send us a message, that if we needed help, he could come after work. And so he did, the last 10 days we were in Spain he helped us with the roof and the planting. He did have to overcome some vertigo, but it didn't stop him from doing a lot of work.

And every day there were other people visiting. People from nearby villages, for example to pick some mulberries. People who once lived in the village or had family that lived in the village. For example Jesus Bujeda, who tried to show us the location of the manantial in the village, unfortunately the way to go there was too much overgrown. He still has a small plot with plums in the village and a part we like and that we can probably buy. Another example is our Gestor Tomás, whose mother was born in Bárcena. He had some forms we had to sign and he came to us instead of us needed to go to his office!

And the last category of course the media, but that will be another blog.