Day 44 - There She Blows!

It had been apparent for some time that our regular Tuesday golf game was going to be an issue.  The New Course at the Club was hosting Day 1 of a Qualifying tournament for aspiring golfers who fancied their chances on the PGA EuroPro tour (this is a UK/NI feeder tour into the Challenge Tour, which itself leads into the man European Tour) and the Old Course would see the normal Tuesday Ladies Competition.

So we needed a Plan B.  We are fortunate that the Burhill Group, the owners of Burhill Golf Club, own a number of other courses around the country, so I had made plans for us to secure a tee time at Hoebridge Golf Centre, less than 10 miles away from home. Hoebridge is a Pay and Play establishment which has an 18 hole course as well a shorter 9 hole course and a further 18 hole Par 3 course.  We were to play on the main course.

The four of us met up at Hoebridge: three of us had played there before but like me, only many years ago. I remembered taking my son and his then-young friends to play n the Par 3 course on numerous occasions, when they were just taking up the game.  What had not been there was the new pirate-themed Adventure Golf facilities - an upmarket mini-golf concept that the Burhill Group have been looking to commercialize on a wider scale at some of their other facilities and also at third party establishments.

The day we had chosen proved to be a bright and breezy one - very breezy!  On the way there, the radio was full of news of flight and ferry delays and major bridge closures and there had been gale force winds on the coasts the previous day. Whilst on the course, we even witnessed a fully grown tree toppling over in the wind: fortunately nobody was in the vicinity.  We also bumped into a small group of Burhill Ladies who had had the same idea as us, but they packed it in after 4 windy holes proved too much for them!

All of this made our golf game a challenging one: at times we were taking 3 clubs extra and we had a fun game.  My partner and I ran into a pair who were playing better, in particular Mark who holed a number of critical putts when he had to. The pirate theme carried over from the mini-golf into the golf match, and he was soon being accused of being Dead-eye Dick, Roger the Cabin Boy and worse.  We knew that he had had a sneaky practice session on the range before the game started, but maybe he had also joined the numerous half-term families on the Adventure Golf too?