Five Of The Best Off The Beaten Track Golf Courses

These five wonderful British Isles courses may be a little out on a limb, but they’re well worth going the extra mile for...

Five Of The Best Off The Beaten Track Golf Courses

Silloth on Solway (Pictured above)

Par 72, 6,408 yards

W: sillothgolfclub.co.uk

As far to the north and west as you can possibly go in England, Silloth is a gloriously remote and unspoiled gem of a course.

While much of our finest golf occurs in clusters, allowing easy access to a number of clubs at a time, this delightfully isolated championship links offers perhaps the best value in the Golf Monthly Top 100.

Both Willie Park Junior and Alister MacKenzie are credited with the design, but nature itself can take a proud bow for this superbly conditioned but testing challenge.

Silloth on Solway GC Course Review

Woodhall Spa - Hotchkin

Par 71, 6,519 yards

W: woodhallspagolf.com

When the English Golf Union relocated to deepest, darkest Lincolnshire in the mid-1990s to set up its national golf centre, there was much tutting about the inconvenient and inaccessible location.

However, with the magnificent Hotchkin course at its heart, the result is a strong magnet that has led to numerous pilgrimages over the years to play this excellent championship design that dates back to 1905.

The recent advisory appointment of architect Tom Doak is likely to make it even more of a draw.

Woodhall Spa GC Hotchkin Course Review 

Durness

Par 70, 5,495 yards (for 18 holes)

W: durnessgolfclub.org

If you want to know what it is like to play golf on the moon and you are not Alan Shepard, then this fabulous little course on the north-western edge of mainland Scotland is as close as you will get.

Its remote, dunescape setting is along a rugged coastline that is worth a tankful of anyone’s petrol, and it closes with a thrilling short hole from one clifftop to another.

The one downside? There are only nine holes.

Continues below

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Five Of The Best Bunkerless Courses

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Connemara

Par 72, 6,339 yards

W: connemaragolflinks.com

The long and winding road that leads from Galway into the sunset midway up Ireland’s west coast is a beautiful drive in its own right.

Keep going as far as you can, and then some, and you arrive at Connemara’s spectacularly located 27 holes.

Related: The UK&I's best hidden gem golf courses

Eddie Hackett designed the course more than 40 years ago, and it runs over beautiful, gently undulating land that is dotted with rocky outcrops.

A quiet day here means there is only a very stiff breeze!

St. Enodoc (Church)

Par 69, 6,299 yards

W: st-enodoc.co.uk

Splendour, splendour everywhere is how John Betjemen ended his ‘Seaside Golf’ poem, and these words can just as easily be applied to this excellent links on Cornwall’s chiselled northern coast just 50 miles from Land’s End.

The former Poet Laureate is buried at the far end of the course in the churchyard beside the 10th green, and the Himalaya bunker on the right of the superb par-4 6th is one of the most photographed in golf.

St Enodoc GC Church Course Review

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