swanny32
Journeyman Pro
If you want a short break for a small amount of money then I can highly recommend North France. Got back last night from our weekend break after having played Hardelot Les Pins on Saturday and Wimereux links on Sunday.
Les Pins has to be the best course I have ever played. Undulating fairways and greens that wind through thick forest. Some simply stunning golf holes! Some of the bunkers are absolutely huge, I went in nearly every single one of them but did manage to hole out from one late on in the round which is the first time I have ever binned a bunker shot. Greens weren't fantastic unfortunately which was probably the only downside but all in all a fantastic course!
Wimereux Links was my first experience of links golf, unfortunately (in some ways) there was hardly any wind at all which made life a little bit easier but the culmination of playing poorly on Saturday and then starting poorly on Sunday got to me more than I wanted it too and I ended up getting rather upset which ruined my round massively. The course was a typical Links course, thick rough, tree's bent over sideways and fast greens. Really nice track but very compact in places meaning that a lot of the time if you hit a bad shot you were playing off the next fairway or in some cases the next fairway after that! A nice little feature on the 13th (I think) is a tee block sat on top of a WWII bunker although you only play off it if you're playing off the whites or blacks. We were told that on a clear day you could see the White cliffs of Dover and true enough with not a cloud in the sky & 25 degree heat there they were. Stunning scenery everywhere you looked which made up for the course not being the best, but still highly recommended.
If you do go over, I can also recommend a hotel in Hardelot town centre called Hotel L'Jardines de Hardelot. Only opened in April, so it's in excellent condition. Rooms are spacious and clean, has private off road parking out the back and a nice quiet lounge area to sit in and relax after a long day hacking up the local courses. Be warned though, the intercom instructions in the hotel manual are wrong, I thought I was dialling my friends at 7:25am to see if they were ready, ended up dialling a random room elsewhere and woke some French bloke up....he didn't sound happy!
Les Pins has to be the best course I have ever played. Undulating fairways and greens that wind through thick forest. Some simply stunning golf holes! Some of the bunkers are absolutely huge, I went in nearly every single one of them but did manage to hole out from one late on in the round which is the first time I have ever binned a bunker shot. Greens weren't fantastic unfortunately which was probably the only downside but all in all a fantastic course!
Wimereux Links was my first experience of links golf, unfortunately (in some ways) there was hardly any wind at all which made life a little bit easier but the culmination of playing poorly on Saturday and then starting poorly on Sunday got to me more than I wanted it too and I ended up getting rather upset which ruined my round massively. The course was a typical Links course, thick rough, tree's bent over sideways and fast greens. Really nice track but very compact in places meaning that a lot of the time if you hit a bad shot you were playing off the next fairway or in some cases the next fairway after that! A nice little feature on the 13th (I think) is a tee block sat on top of a WWII bunker although you only play off it if you're playing off the whites or blacks. We were told that on a clear day you could see the White cliffs of Dover and true enough with not a cloud in the sky & 25 degree heat there they were. Stunning scenery everywhere you looked which made up for the course not being the best, but still highly recommended.
If you do go over, I can also recommend a hotel in Hardelot town centre called Hotel L'Jardines de Hardelot. Only opened in April, so it's in excellent condition. Rooms are spacious and clean, has private off road parking out the back and a nice quiet lounge area to sit in and relax after a long day hacking up the local courses. Be warned though, the intercom instructions in the hotel manual are wrong, I thought I was dialling my friends at 7:25am to see if they were ready, ended up dialling a random room elsewhere and woke some French bloke up....he didn't sound happy!
