Alvaiázere, a municipality located in the Leiria region and known as the “Chicharro Capital” is investing in a new area of tourist attraction, which combines sport with nature: Disc Golf. It is a sport similar to golf, created in the United States, in which practitioners do not use clubs and balls, but rather a plastic disc (frisbee) that must be “basked” along the course.
As explained by APUDD – Portuguese Association of Ultimate and Disc Sportsthe objective of this game is to complete the course with as few throws as possible. The playing field usually consists of nine or eighteen holes, each of which is an independent scoring unit. Play, on each hole, begins at the teeing area (tee) and ends at the target object (basket). After the player throws from the starting area, each successive throw is made from the location where the disc from the previous throw stopped. Upon completing a hole, the player proceeds to the starting area of the next hole, successively until all holes have been completed.
This Saturday, October 18th, the Carrascal Discgolf Course opened, at Mata do Carrascal Botanical Park. It is another step in the plan drawn up a year and a half ago, the president of the Alvaiázere Chamber, João Paulo Guerreiro, explained to the Lusa agency.
“We saw in Disc Golf – one of the fastest growing sports in the world – great potential, especially because it is a sport widely practiced in North America and Northern Europe. And players, in the winter period, end up coming to the south looking for weather conditions to practice this sport”.
It is this flow of sports tourism that the municipality wants to attract, adding in the center of the town, from Saturday, a new route to the existing offer at the Valle D’Encanto Disc Golf Park complex, located 4 km from Alvaiázere.
The dream of two Swedish practitioners
Disc Golf at Valle D’Encanto Disc Golf Park
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Operating for a year, the private project Valle D’Encanto Disc Golf Park It is intended to serve disc golf beginners to professionals. Since it opened, more than 500 players have been there from countries such as the United States of America, Canada, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway or Denmark, where the sport is widely established.
“About a year and a half ago we realized – in an international competition, in Finland – the potential, both in terms of sport and tourism. And we realized that they are immense”, highlighted João Paulo Guerreiro.
“Disc Golf generates hundreds of millions of euros annually” and Alvaiázere’s intention is to enter this circuit. “If we can keep a small slice of this, it would be very important for our territory.” With just over six thousand inhabitants in the municipality, “we have to take advantage of these niches and these opportunities to differentiate”, added the mayor.
Disc Golf arrived in Alvaiázere through two Swedes who practice the sport and who took up residence in Alvaiázere. They were looking for a place to install a course and spoke to Amaral Carvalho, owner of the land where the Valle D’Encanto Disc Golf Park now stands, in the town of Marzugueira.
The first course installed was so popular that today there are four on 13 of the property’s 15 hectares: three with 18 holes (or baskets) and another with nine. They are designed for professional players, amateurs, beginners and children. One is being developed for people with reduced mobility.
Disc Golf at Valle D’Encanto Disc Golf Park
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The Valle D’Encanto Disc Golf Park project envisages a 5-star hotel, whose construction should “start within a year”, explained Amaral Carvalho.
The combination of Disc Golf and an educational farm allows practitioners to find “baby donkeys, goats and other animals throughout the course”. While playing, “you can pick up nuts, fruits, tangerines” or understand how to remove the cork or pick up the olive. “It’s a completely different sensorial experience” which, he highlighted, aims to place Alvaiázere and the region as an “Iberian reference for Disc Golf”.
The reactions of practitioners to passing through Alvaiázere led the municipality to create the Carrascal Discgolf Course. “They came from all over and the feedback was very positive. This led us to make public investment”, said João Paulo Guerreiro.
The mayor believes that Disc Golf can be “a great lever, both at a tourist and sporting level”, for the municipality, but not only that. “We have very interesting economic studies and studies on the number of practitioners. We are going to try to take a step forward here, both in Alvaiázere and in the Sicó region. It was important to have some more offer and it was important that the municipalities in the region could understand this and create a ‘cluster’ here”, he concluded.
Coinciding with the inauguration of the course, the Valle D’Encanto Disc Golf Park hosted the National Disc Golf Championship over the weekend, which saw the participation of 42 players.
Disc Golf at Valle D’Encanto Disc Golf Park
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