Warren Golf Club

Why is this not on everyone’s links list?  A travesty.  It is in every respect a links and is a gloriously local links course which has made a real effort to embrace it’s landscape, flora and fauna. 

It may have been started by the Earls of Devon but is now in the hands of the Devon Trust for Nature Conservation and is part of the community of wildlife and people.   Surrounded on three sides by the sea, marsh and the estuary it encapsulates the seaside links experience.  Each hole is named after a native or visiting specimen of flora or fauna.  There are drives over the water and an awful lot of bumping and running.  Due to the partnership with DTNC and keeping things in balance the green keepers do not have the full armoury of chemicals to maintain a course to the standard of the modern eye.  However the greens will run as fast as you wish.  They were in excellent condition when we visited and their reputation preceded them.

It is not a long course, at just under 6000 yards and is quite compact in places.  There are two par fives which follow one another which is a shame and five par 3s but that is the nature of the site.  Interestingly you go out for 6 holes and back to the clubhouse after 10 and back out to 13 before returning so two loops out and back in effect.  For me the run from 3 through 7 were the pick.  No shared greens but 1 and 18 share a fairway – like Brancaster and The Old Course, if a little tighter. 

The green fees are very reasonable and it was more than reasonable for the club to donate them to Alzheimer’s Society.  For which many thanks for a very lovely round of seaside links on an entirely unspoilt spit of land that shows how golf and naturalists can cohabit.