A golf escape in Wales

Sep 24 2010 By Ray Dunn

As a golfing fanatic, I’ve come across some challenging hazards on courses around the world. In fact, I’ve been in most of them.

But hole-y cow, they don’t come much stranger than on the stunning links course at Pennard Golf Club, atop the Gower peninsula cliffs a few miles from Swansea.

The bunkers are hard enough to deal with. The rough is tough. The fairways are, shall we say, challenging.

But the cowpats? Well, that’s a hazard you don’t want to be in. And the electrified fences around every green? They can come, literally, as a bit of a shock.

Pennard, it is soon apparent, is a golf course with a difference.

It may be a challenging traditional links, full of undulating hillocks, hollows, dunes and blind drives.

But this course is inundated not just with golfers – but with hundreds of cows and their attendant golf bulls, wandering at will and leaving their own special trail.

It’s one of many features that make this a course apart.

For a start, it’s not on the shore in traditional links style – rather, it is 200 feet above the sea, nestling atop Three Cliffs Bay and providing glorious views and a permanent prevailing wind. Not surprisingly, it is known as The Links in the Sky.

It’s one of the hidden gems of South Wales that I set out to uncover in a long weekend dedicated purely to golfing away from the traditionally beaten track. If you’re a golfer, then you’ll not want to miss the pleasure of playing this tantalising and dramatic course. If you’re not, no matter. This is common land criss-crossed with walking paths that steer you around the imposing ruins of Pennard Castle, down to the beaches below the cliffs. It is holiday walking country at its very best.

But therein lies the rub. Local farmers insist on exercising their rights of way, too. Hence the hundreds of cows that are turned out each day to graze this golf course pasture, and the electric fences to protect the greens from them.