We use Park4Night to find overnights. We try & find somewhere free or low price, a place recommended by other motorhomers.
We’ve enjoyed staying at several farms so far – open air free roaming pigs, walnut farms, vineyards…they’re all more than a car park, they’re a local who you can support by buying some of their produce.
We’ve just stayed at a farm. It was a good stop – we didn’t mind paying a small fee, we’d be supporting local. The donkey and the cockerel fought it out as to who had the loudest call to wake you up in the morning & we were surrounded by the strong scent of manure! We felt the van was secure while we left it to go out for a cycle.
However, on the morning we were leaving, another camper couple suggested we visit the farm museum. It was interesting to go round. BUT…we got to look out of a window at the working farm area, & were greeted by a difficult sight to see. A calf that seemed to be a new born, in straw in the bucket of a loader tractor. From the looks of it, it hadn’t even taken its first steps, it was only just starting to raise its head. It had been brought along to be put in a kennel shed with a gate front, no more than 2m x 1m. It was joining around 12 other calves of similar age, each one in a similar kennel.
These calves are used for veal. The mothers were presumably straight back in the open sided, year round feeding pens ready for milking later that day.
Outside the farm a dog was kept in a cement floored cage, its food thrown on the floor, a collection of its waste festering in a third of the cage. It flinched when we showed it kindness.
This farm is probably top of Spanish animal welfare requirements for a large production farm. BUT, & this is just our personal opinion, animal welfare is important to us, what we saw at the farm marred the stay for us. We were looking at a thriving business, that didn’t seem to fully appreciate the animal lives that were its bread & butter, not making the effort to give the animals a moment of happiness in their short life.
We were happy to move on.