Tom,
I appreciate your cautions about residents, but we only have a few participants from the UK on this site. I have to say that they may be few in number, but there is a lot of quality information available from the few UK contributors, few of whom are native.
There may be problems with immigrants magnified by the current problems in France, but we are more than delighted with our American golfing residents, who appreciate our native resources in depth. They may have despised us and rejected us once [a few centuries ago], but one of them is known to have taken up cricket. I remember his drive on the 17th at Painswick. I was humiliated to try to follow him in the match following.
Come on, let's also try to forget the humiliation of my topping a 5-wood off the 1st tee at Painswick in the match following Rihc with TV cameras still rolling while all in his match either drove the green or left themselves a simple pitch in. He (Rihc) went on to some ridiculous score in the low 60s.
Mark - that went ZOOM, way over my head - though I did enjoy the images and the self-deprecation.
My sole and only point was that at times residents, particularly ex-pats who have moved there, forget that the priorities of visitors are different - that visitors haven't seen all the greats already - so while hidden gems and the like seem like great fun to you, and the more well-known greats might seem like nothing but painful and expensive and over-run with tourists, well - you've been to these already and thus might see no need to return. But wouldn't you still want to play them at least once?
Whilst over there, residents and ex-pats and everyone has always been VERY nice to me, and that goes for Scotland, England, Ireland (haven't been to Wales). That's not my point at all here.
All I really wanted to do was tweak my friends Goodale and Bonnar a bit!
TH
ps - the advice Brent posted is golden. It might seem obvious, but it is not to be forgotten. One does never know when or if one will get back.