Following, gingerly, in the footsteps of BUDA, one of my oldest golfing chums and I just had a super East Midlands mini-break to Luffenham, Hollinwell and Coxmoor. On the drive up from Cambridge we played 18 at Luffenham (which I knew quite well) as a warm-up, and then 36 at Hollinwell and Coxmoor (both new to me), in gorgeous early autumn conditions (unlike the forecast semi-hurricane: had we cancelled in response to the 'severe weather warning' we would have been more than a tad irritated...). The whole venture worked at £42 per round, which for golf of this calibre was a very good deal indeed. I won't add to the extensive stream of laudatory comments on Hollinwell, other than to append this link to
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/hollin_well_annesley/the former (and surprisingly extensive) Hollinwell Halt (a name now of course taken over by the admirably-positioned halfway-ish hut). Rightly or wrongly, we played off the yellow tees at Hollinwell, and the whites at Luffenham and Coxmoor: there was zero run in the morning dew, and this seemed the sensible thing to do. Coxmoor and Hollinwell are both SSS 73 when played from these tees, and we both thought that in that specific context Coxmoor was the tougher test: obviously, Hollinwell off the whites would have been an altogether bigger challenge, but for my friend (6 handicap) and me (14) it did seem pleasingly 'doable', and we both played to or slightly under handicap.
GCAers will be very pleased to hear, following Sean's comments on Coxmoor of a few years ago, that there has been a major programme of tree removal: one of the members we were chatting to said that the course was 'unrecognisable in parts' from even twelve months ago, especially around the 7th, 8th and 9th. That said, there is still some way to go, with some superfluous leylandii prime candidates for the saw. Obviously Coxmoor is ten times noisier and busier than Hollinwell, which shows in the overall conditioning. The entry to Hollinwell, and the sheer scale of the whole site, is unmatched in my experience of British golf inland, and seems more akin to those US courses like Ekwanok that I have only ever glimpsed in photographs. The welcome at both was warm and friendly.
The one east midlands disappointment was the clubhouse beer, which seemed prevalently Greene King and not very exciting. On this outing we couldn't sample Sherwood Forest, about the merits of which there seems some GCA disagreement, but for an unusual British golf trip, combining scenery, history (Robin Hood, Lord Byron etc), industrial archaeology, and really enjoyable and challenging inland golf at very reasonable rates, the East Midlands takes some beating.