"Grass Routes" Chapter 18 - The Northcliffe
20th December 2022
And so the urge comes again, gnawing away at me. Another daft mission, another few hours, another tank of the earth’s precious fuel. Three hundred and sixty-four days earlier, I’d been heading north, to speedgolf at Muirfield and beyond, in search of whatever message I thought lay waiting for me in the centre of golf.
This time the road went east, back towards Kent, towards Thanet. A road I know like the back of my hand, every camber of the motorway nourishing; every landmark a familiar milestone of an early childhood. Broadstairs meant so much to my parents, who managed to move there twice, but it means so much to me, too.
Memories of them and of endless hours on the sandy beaches, watching children ride donkeys across Viking Bay, and sitting enthralled at the Punch and Judy shows of a different time. And somewhere in that hazy blend of thoughts and feelings, the vaguest recollection of an afternoon above the crumbling white cliffs of Joss Bay, triggered by a short entry in my late father’s 1982 Letts diary.
25th July reads “golf at Kingsgate with R”, right in the middle of a frantic phase of packing. For that summer we would move across the country and into Wales, the necessities of work dragging my parents away from the place that always felt like home to them. Somehow I’d completely lost this fragment until I read that familiar handwriting; I’d always remembered golf as an addiction first sampled in Cardiff. But the fading blue ink of his - now my - fountain pen was hanging on to the yellowing page, and in my mind some visual shadow resurfaced to meet it.
I’d strolled across parts of North Foreland’s land over the years, marvelling at the views in daylight hours, and catching sight of the contours under the brief flash of the lighthouse after dark. But I’d no recollection of this second, short loop at the club - The Northcliffe Course - until a friend mentioned it. Eighteen holes, all par 3’s, and all within just fifteen acres at the top of the property.
A few years on from that diary entry the pitch and putt of Heath Park, two hundred and something miles west of here, would become a second home for me, so the appeal of The Northcliffe was obvious. But then I learned of the architectural background - that Fowler and Simpson had laid it out - worked together on it, a rare occurrence - so an inspection of this remote field became not so much a choice as a necessity.
Five days before Christmas is hardly a convenient time to take a day out and hammer towards a freezing coastline, but it was the only window I had left and as the morning started to build, the sun’s light peering over the dark silhouette of northern France, there was a clarity in the air that seemed to match my purpose here. A chance to finish off the year’s golf with a course that might complete a circuit for me.
C and I meet and shake hands, and drink black coffee in the bar as the land outside slowly turns green. And then off we go, with a handful of clubs and balls and very little else. Through an archway lies the first tee, and from the first moment back on this chalky patch of heaven, I am enchanted.
The holes come thick and fast, and we race around, working our way through the genial routing as the wind flaps the flags. Each hole has a different yardage, under divergent compass bearings, and the spectacular bunkering and mischievous green slopes are every bit as beguiling as the work of the architects’ more famous work. Time and again we float balls right at the flags, holding our breath until the drama unfolds, and then we rush to hole out and start all over again.
And then - way too soon - it is over, and C must resume the normal pattern of life, and put those fine wedges aside for a while. But it is quiet out here so I carry on, getting to know the place, eagerly courting the course. I jump around a bit to avoid the few other pairs out, and declare it a fine morning’s work at fifty holes, in favour of another trip down memory lane.
I find C inside, and thank him, but such smiles and words cannot transmit a fraction of what this latest - perhaps last - Grass Route has meant to me. This place, these sights, the Victorian town next door - they are part of the fabric of my being; the physical props of my story, and to discover in the idle inspection of an old journal that golf first touched me right here, four decades back, brings saltwater to my eye.
A tear for my dear parents, a tear for the childhood joy that steadily drifts from view, a tear for the knowledge that these precious weeks and years with my own children are slowly ebbing away, as they count the hours to Christmas back at home, while I clutch at straws and pitch at flags.
I take in a silent loop of Broadstairs, peering at the two houses my folks once lived in, and nurse another coffee in the time capsule that is Morelli’s ice cream parlour. My senses are alight with all the meaning of these streets and views, and I sit and listen to Louisa Bay’s persistent waves drawing back off the sand, the same rhythm of cold water that on a more recent 25th July dragged me helplessly towards the wind turbines in the Channel; another story for another day.
And then it is back on the road - travelling home again - but as Kent makes way for Surrey, and motorway for suburban street, it feels as if the morning journey was really the one taking me home, just not in a physical sense. After the year I’d had, of golfing explorations and midlife conundrums, to have spent the morning in pursuit of all that I once loved about golf - the simplicity of it all expressed in just a few acres with just a few clubs - felt just perfect. The right place at the right time, again. Another good bounce.
Maybe the thing I’d been looking for in Scotland last Christmas was nothing to do with bucket lists, or famous courses, or even the game of golf as most people understand it. Maybe it was an interior journey, to try and recover what was left of me and my passions. And golf was somehow the only prism through which I could peer at them; the only remaining strand of those blissful, childhood days.
Golf means different things to different people, but the extravagant lawns and shiny new equipment mean next to nothing to me. Nor does this global sport, where the poetry and romance of the Open and the Masters now seem tainted by money and branding and noise. But out on North Foreland, flicking shots into the sea breeze and watching the ball bounce firm and fast as another year ticks over, that passage of time is halted for a while. And I know that this is real golf for me, the purer form.
A natural course, the elements. The joy of watching the ball soar above the land; the pain of then watching it fall short, or lip out. Life is rarely this simple, I suggest, and rarely this good. And while shared words can only ever hint at what we try to transmit of our inner lives, the recommendation that brought me back to Thanet in the first place - “it’s my favourite place in the world” suddenly makes sense to me.
The Northcliffe Course at North Foreland oughtn’t to be quite so wonderful, based on reputation alone, or golfing facts and theories. But it is to me a sacred space, one filled with joy and wonder. It won’t be another four decades before I return…