Can't play golf? plan a holiday instead...

[billyg]

M's post yesterday got me thinking about booking a full on golfing holiday (note: if your not interested in this sort of thing press the back button now).

The hand injury has got me into the mood for starting to plan a holiday for autumn/winter if for no other reason than to be distracted, to try and remain optimisic and set a decent goal (in no particular order.)

A few limiting factors.

1) I hate flying but after avoiding it for well over a dozen years it's time to confront this one and the promise of a nice golf based holiday is a big carrot on the end of the stick.

Therefore, the flight will be booked independently to go out of London City Airport(can't face the nightmare mosh of a big hub for my first flight) and take me(us) as far south as possible using business class(the last time I dragged myself off a plane- from Singapore - I swore an oath never to fly economy again) which essentially means Madrid, Spain and from there on by train.

Return cost in autumn for such a flight - about £300 each including taxes



2) Total budget for two weeks roughly £2000 - £2500 between us with £600 of that lopped off for the flights minus train tickets of course = £1400 - £1900 or £700 to £950 each all in.Not exactly top dollar but quite a lot to us nonetheless.

3) Accomodation must be self catering mainly due to the missus being a vegetable botherer and it's just not fair for me to be able to order prettymuch anything off the menu while she has........onion soup...again.

4) We like peace and quiet away from the 'britfest' experience so maybe somewhere a little off the beaten track.

5) Were not class 1 players so don't think we'd benefit much from playing a world renowned course where Faldo or Monty cuts the grass on the fairways with their toenail clippers etc. Just somewhere with a half decent golf course or two to play really.


Ive only started looking at this but it seems there's a couple of ways to go with it. You either take a risk and book the whole shooting match through a golf specialist holiday agent/company or you book the accomodation and golf yourself with the former being easier clearly but the latter offering the greatest flexibility.

Ive had a look back over the past years threads relating to Spain golf on here

I'll probably update this thread as my knowledge of what's out there and how it works develops and i'll report back for anyone thinking of having a go at this themselves.

If anyones got any helpful suggestions or observations then chip in , i'm all ears. Individual recomendations for courses that youve played are great but a bit to far down the detail line at the moment. I'm thinking more broad advice about planning, regions, holiday experiences and any decent resources either web, book or other etc. at the moment .

Cheers all,

BillyG

 

[HomerJSimpson]

BillyG

Top class forum poster, fine golfer, kind to his wife and GM forums very own Alan Whicker

 

[viscount17]

I've booked several non-golfing holidays myself though this has not always proved to be the most economical way to do it once you add in the cost of car hire, fuel etc.
These have mainly been in France using this site, which you will see has expanded to include Spain and Portugal. Never had a bad one

http://www.holidayfrancedirect.co.uk/Spain_Holidays/index.htm

 

[billyg]

Time for a first update.

(Another long rambling bit of wibble so look away now if not interested)

First thing that stands out when looking at a golf holiday is the lack of impartial advice available on the net.

Type in any variation on the theme of 'Golf' ' Holiday' 'Golf courses' etc and you invariably get directed to a site that is some form of agent. That's fine if you already know where you want to go but at this point i'm frankly more interested in what's actually out there as far as golf courses.

Once again the agent sites will give you an idea of what's about but they invariably only show the courses that they deal with or have a tie-up with.

What's needed is a list of all the golf courses available, where they are and some impartial advice about what to expect at each in order to put the agents into some perspective.

Then a stroke of luck. Sorting through some paperwork I find this sandwiched between a gas bill and this months GM;

http://www.psppublishing.com/supplements.html

Scroll to the bottom of the page. it's the last supplement(frustratingly with no detail)

I say frustratingly because I haven't got a clue how I aquired this and there's not one single solid piece of information contained within to suggest who it is by - hence the publishers website.

Not much use to anyone wanting a copy i'm afraid.

The only clues are at the bottom of the welcome page signed ' on behalf of Turismo Andaluz' and an advert using similar graphics indicating www.andalucia.org which is probably a safe bet.

The website itself is annoyingly clunky and doesn't include the map contained within the paper guide which appears to show every single golf course. Not strictly impartial as of course this is a tourist website but fairly close.

Another stroke of inspiration arrives on page 184 of this months GM in the form of Pocket guides to Golf series

website here

http://www.pocket-golf.com/Pocket%20Guides.htm

Spain and Portugal guide is duly ordered.

This guide does not list every golf course but instead takes the slant of rating what it considers to be courses of merit within the regions covered and gives a wealth of detail on each. In additon it includes all of the Costa Del Sol courses including Costa de la Luz (Cadiz and Huelva) as this is such a dense and popular golfing destination.

There are a number of omissions if one is to go by the map in my earlier paper guide but I put this down to rapid development since 2004 when the pocket guide was published. But pocket guides' website says that '.......an online update is forthcoming'

Between these two publications there's enough information to be able to piece together club and location information but it'll be quite a lot of work.

At least I have some source material with which to dissect the agent websites.

The decision as to what type of holiday to put together remains largely on hold while the airline industry decides what it's going to do about fuel levies. By the time I get around to confronting my fear of flying the decision may well have been made for me as there won't be any !(or well be back to a post-war situation where you need to be a millionaire to afford a seat)*

With a mind boggled by golf adverts it seems a fair appraisal to say that the original two catagories of 'do it yourself' and 'package' is no longer adequate however and now seems to be

'do it yourself'

' agent based package'

' resort based package'(some courses seem to be exclusively owned and run by a single company which operates it's own holiday booking arrangements for clients).

Anyway, more to come soon.

bill

* anyone with the slightest interest in going to the continent by train (and I daresay the numbers will grow as the oil crisis deepens) could do a lot worse than have a look at this chaps website;

http://www.seat61.com/

This (to me) is really where the web excels. Anything about getting around the continent by train that isn't on here isn't worth knowing IMHO.

b