Bernie and Linda's Blog: Back in Olvera

We have been in Olvera for a week now. It is nice to be here. We rented the same house that we have rented since 2017. It feels like home. (It is for sale again, so this might be the last time we rent it.)

As I was writing the last paragraph, I was thinking to myself, “home”… How do you define that? Where exactly is our “home” located? Sure, Fernie house is our principal residence, but except for the period of time when covid travel restrictions were in place, I don’t think that we have spent more than 6 weeks “residing” in any single location, during the last 10 years or more. Having two residences in BC for 14 years certainly contributed to this situation.

We are thinking that soon we should minimize the travel and settle in one location for a longer time period But the fact is is that we really enjoy the change of scene and culture. We are both particularly attracted to life in Spain and Portugal. Albeit, not enough to immigrate, but enough to continue to return as much as possible.

Enough of that….. here are photos of our neighborhood in Olvera. The house is located at the top of a high hill in the old village. The streets are too narrow for cars, bikes and scooters can enter

This is an old comunal water supply at the entrance to the area.
It is still functional.

View from patio

The doorway on the far right is the entrance to the house. In the upper part of the photo is one of the access lanes.

Coming down the lane to the house

The house is on the corner of the street. One of the rooftop patios is visible.

We have been busy since we arrived. The first couple of days we spent getting organized. We had some stuff stored at a friends place and our bikes were in storage in a shed in a small farm located on the edge of town. Everything had stored well.

The bikes were a little dusty but cleaned up. No problem with the batteries. Both had a good charge. We have done three good bike rides since we arrived. The first was a short out and back trip on the vía verde (bike path on abandoned rail line). The other two were circular routes. The first of these was about 47k and todays ride was about 44k.

The area we are in is very hilly. One is generally riding downhill or uphill. There are few level areas. Below is a screen shot from my phone of today’s ride. Note the “elevation gain” in the bottom right corner of the screen shot. Even on a e-bike, 4147 metres (13,606 ft) of climbing is quite a bit of work. We ride the bikes more like a normal bike than an e-bike. We only use a minimum of assist so as to keep moving. We are generally in the lowest gear on the steeper climbs. We both had more than 60% of the battery power remaining when we finished the ride. The batteries had more power left than we did! It was a pretty tough ride in hot conditions.

A couple of days ago we took a bus into the city of Jerez. Jerez is located about 100k west of Olvera. We went there to pickup a scooter that we have rented for two weeks. It is only a 125cc scooter but it is physically larger than a most scooters. (This model is available with a 350cc motor). It is one of the newer “X” type scooters introduced by Honda a few years ago. (Not available in North America). It is cross between a scooter and a motorcycle. Larger wheels, better suspension, antilock disc brakes and on/off road tires. It has excellent passenger seating and the 125cc version is cable of cruising at speeds up to 90 kph. It will be perfect for short trips around this area and will give us more flexibility. It is really fun to ride and inexpensive to rent.

Below are a few photos taken during our bike rides. The top photo was taken on a local access road coming into the village of la Muela. Later on we came around a bend, the road ahead was full of goats being bearded back from their grazing area. Dad was driving the car and his young sone was out helping to keep the stragglers moving. We stopped on the side of the road so as not to impede their progress.