Goat farm becomes a showpiece

Day 26: The sea is far away, but this is still the most beautiful place we have stood here in Spain - at least for me. Icke can't quite decide. She still raves about Camping Malvarrosa de Corinto in Sagunto. I think because of the many “gorgeous stones” there on the beach. I probably like this place so much because there are no “gorgeous stones” that I have to carry bags full of to the motorhome...

No, joking aside. The Granda la Carmela is a showpiece. With 25 pitches, not too big and not too small, half parking space, half campsite, generously laid out, but without long distances. “Three years ago it was still a goat farm,” says Hortensia and laughs. She still can't really believe that she and her husband Sjaak have created a facility that is already considered an insider tip among campers.

When she took over the farm in 2020, she didn't really know what to do with it. Her dad had taken over the land from his father 30 years earlier - at that time it was full of lemon trees - and painstakingly converted and expanded it for goat farming. “He started with ten, 15 goats. At some point there were 600.” He could no longer do that alone, so Hortensia's mom gave up her job as a cook in a restaurant and helped him. The goat farm became the couple's life's work, which they proudly passed on to their daughter. And what does she do? She turns it into a campsite! “Yes,” Hortensia remembers, “Dad wasn’t particularly happy at the beginning, but now he is. He helps where he can.” Just like his mother, who checks in regularly to make sure nothing is getting out of hand.

It doesn't, because Hortensia and Sjaak keep a close eye on their piece of jewelry. They are almost always on site as contact persons, even though both still have a job, Sjaak part-time and Hortensia full-time as a technical assistant for the city of Murcia with a variety of control tasks - that must run in the family. “A lot of work, yes, that’s true,” she says – as always with a broad smile. And when the mother of a daughter (14) and a son (11) still finds a few minutes of time, she enchants the walls and walls of the square buildings with her tile mosaics into real works of art.

Everything could have turned out differently. A work colleague of Sjaak's, who was still driving a truck at the time, had the idea of converting the area into a simple parking lot. But that was not accepted. “I advertised the place on a website for campers, but no one came,” says Hortensia. No reaction. For many months. Until suddenly one day the doorbell rang. “I still remember it exactly,” says Hortensia, “it was September 27, 2021, my daughter’s birthday. I was terribly stressed and wanted to get away. Suddenly this woman stood in front of me and asked me: 'Can we stand here?' Standing here? I thought. At first I didn't even know what she wanted until it slowly dawned on me." The woman stayed one night and was thrilled. She published a great review on the Internet and started a ball rolling that continues to roll and roll and roll to this day - hopefully for many, many years to come!