Going for Golf

Hawkstone Park

One of the hidden gems in the Midlands is Hawkstone Park, near Shrewsbury, where golfers get the best of both worlds. Those who want a real challenge can take to the Championship course – known to locals as The Windmill. Designed by ex-Ryder Cup captain Brian Huggett it has wide fairways and water in abundance.

For the more sedate among us – those of us who prefer to admire the scenery as much as their handiwork with a golf club – there is The Hawkstone. The former is a real test. Measuring 6,764 yards it may not be the longest of courses by modern standards but its challenge lies in how you navigate your way around it. Clever use of mounding and shaping of the fairways poses taxing questions of even the best players. The giant lake hugged by the 10th fairway is perhaps the most demanding test. A par-five, the fairway dog-legs around the lake and those able to reach the green over the water in two can reap huge rewards, perhaps ... par?

The more scenic Hawkstone course smacks of a gentler time in the game’s history as the fairways take you through the follies and cliffs of the park. Picturesque is the only way to describe it. Hawkstone Park makes a great base for a new initiative loosely called the Shropshire Tour. For a moderate £349pp, golfers can enjoy four nights’ dinner bed & breakfast and five rounds of golf on some of the area’s finest courses including Oswestry, Shrewsbury and Llanymynech – where on the fourth hole you tee off in Wales and hole out in England and from the 12th tee you can look into at least four counties.