La Almarza Golf Resort

La Almarza Golf Resort opened in 2008 in Sanchidrián, designed by Green Project with Alfonso Vidaor as architect, on a site chosen as much for what it could preserve as for what it could build. Of the 610,000 square metres given over to the resort, 370,000 remain intact holm oak woodland, alongside a 75,000 square metre natural lagoon left largely untouched by the development around it.

The course itself makes full use of that setting, with soft, natural shaping and strategic use of the lagoon and elevation changes to create genuinely memorable holes rather than an imposed layout. Poplars and willows follow the creeks, holm oak and other native trees scatter across open plains in classic Castilian style, and the course rewards a considered game over raw aggression. A separate 9-hole par-3 course sits alongside the main eighteen, useful for a shorter session or genuine practice.

Facilities are simpler here than at some of the region's larger resorts, but the setting more than compensates. This is an honest, well-priced round in one of Castile's more ecologically distinctive corners — well worth the trip out from Madrid.