Dunstanburgh Castle Golf Club in Embleton, Northumberland is where I fell in love with links golf. Summer 1975 and my brother and I had only recently taken up golf. This was the last family summer holiday that Bill and I went on together - other commitments and activities took us off on our own adventures thereafter. The course had no clubhous in those days, just a shed with an honesty box for green fees. It may be a false, rose-tinted memory but I seem to recall that our junior week tickets cost 50p.
I have been back several times since and it does now have a clubhouse although that serves as a tea-room for the nearby Embleton Beach as much as for the needs of golfers. The course is a superb strip of land behind and between dunes, rarely more than two holes in width. Classic, beautiful and eminently affordable. This is my kind of golf.
I could have chosen the 13th for its sheer beauty - a par three sitting under the lee of the castle and played over a ravine - a public footpath wending its way past the hole so that you often make a fool of yourself before an audience of passers-by. However that hole is a mere 100 yards long and so I select the 6th, a delicious par 4 played from an elevated tee that gives a commanding view of the bay, the fairway curving left beneath you. The photograph shows the hole running from bottom to top of the frame. The right of the picture shows the adjoining 1st hole. Simply breathtaking.
Bill and I later found our golf subservient to team sports - cricket for him, rugby for me. However golf is now our shared enthusiasm. We played yesterday at Pype Hayes. I played like a clown. He won. There's always a next time.
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