Ana García Romero Sevilla
Seville
Updated Friday, February 9, 2024-21:33
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Play
golf accompanied by sheep.
It is the new sustainable initiative that has just been launched at the
Barceló Montecastillo Golf hotel,
in the province of Cádiz. Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton have passed through its rooms and its 160 hectares of land with native flora and fauna this week; Sebastián Yatra last summer, who played a few holes with
the hotel's deputy director, Borja Sánchez Gil
; or
the right-handed Manuel Escribano,
Bernd Schuster
—who goes often— and artists like Anuel, Maluma, Bizarrap or Manuel Turizo. Everyone could play golf with about
50 La Mancha-Southern sheep
on a future visit. Because when they passed by the place, the flock was still grazing peacefully on the other side of the hotel's boundaries.
They lived with Pepe, their shepherd,
and their dogs Lluvia and Rambo among others. "Super obedient dogs that
take the herd wherever we want
, without ever entering the
green
, but rather in the rough," Borja Sánchez tells LOC. One day, the hotel managers were making a round when they met Pepe, from the Estrella del Marqués region of Jerez. Every morning he takes his sheep for a walk and
they suggested he take them to the resort
. The idea was to follow in the footsteps of courses like
St.Andrews, in Scotland, the birthplace of golf
, where this idea is already successfully underway.
Pepe, the shepherd of the sheep of MontecastilloCedida
Although the field is usually cut daily with machines,
the sheep eat the
tall weeds. Additionally, the animals may eat different grasses that are not found outside the hotel grounds. "The shepherd explained to us that the branches here -Bermuda,
Paspalum
, thistle...-
are liked more
than those where they usually are and that, in addition, their
feces serve as manure
and fertilizer for the golf course."
As the high season of this sport is about to begin, the sheep will enter
Montecastillo with Pepe once a month
, although on other dates they could do so weekly.
Don't worry about them;
It would be very difficult for a ball to hit a sheep
. So that this does not happen, and so that a player does not get distracted in a shot, they take them to
Hole 18 while the players start on hole 1.
Although they can meet.
"The other day they crossed paths
; the golfers waited to shoot until the sheep moved and loved the experience."
The sheep of MontecastilloCedida
To drink,
they look for water wherever there is
, for example, in the lakes on the golf course, where they went without hesitation a few days ago.
Koi carp and trout
live there
, which are used for fishing activities with groups of children. In addition, geese, ducks, geese, rabbits, roosters and chickens also live in the hotel. Quite a job. Therefore, in high season the workforce is
about
190 workers
and in low season about 130.
They have a spa and accept pets, they do activities in
their organic garden
and will soon start horseback riding thanks to a neighbor from Montecastillo who
has a riding school with horses.
And they will install solar panels.
See this post on Instagram
For this reason, they have personnel specialized in
animals and gardens,
such as the
greenkeeper
or head gardener, who is in charge of managing the golf course and
other green facilities.
Also of its three regulation football fields, which makes clubs such as
Ajax, Manchester United, Atlético de Bilbao, Sevilla FC
, Atlético de Madrid visit them -every summer- or Betis, which arrived last Thursday. In addition to different national teams.
The Montecastillo golf course was designed by one of the best players in the history of
world golf, Jack Nicklaus
, who made "a design that very few courses have and that is located in a natural paradise." For this reason, Montecastillo has
hosted the Volvo Master five times, with the Spanish Golf Federation
, which was
the final of the European Tour
.
They only have one problem:
drought
. "It is affecting us a lot. We have
50% restrictions.
Now in winter it is not necessary to water everything due to the dew at night, only the
greens
, which is the most important thing. In summer we will have to take measures, because we will not be able to water the field every day. We are with
lawyers and issues of concessions
, ponds and community neighbors who may have extra water and can donate or sell it to us... And in this, the sheep cannot help us."