Royal North Devon

RND, as it's often called, is certainly historic, notably the oldest golf club in England.  Probably.

There's a slight controversy as to the definition of a club, though if you clarify that t's the oldest club still playing on its original grounds, you'll be in the clear.  And they proclaim it without any hesitation as soon as one enters the car park.

As is often the case, the club is also known by the name of the local village, in this case Western Ho!  No doubt you're curious, so back to Wikipedia:

Westward Ho! is a seaside village near Bideford in Devon, England. The A39 road provides access from the towns of Barnstaple, Bideford and Bude. It lies at the south end of Northam Burrows and faces westward into Bideford Bay, opposite Saunton Sands and Braunton Burrows. There is an electoral ward with the same name. The population at the 2011 census was 2,112.[1]

Rather unusual to be sure, but let me make clear that the exclamation point is strictly mandatory.  

Westward Ho! is noted for its unusual place name.[2]The village name comes from the title of Charles Kingsley's novel Westward Ho! (1855), which was set in nearby

Bideford. The book was a bestseller, and entrepreneurs saw the opportunity to develop tourism in the area.

As further development took place, the expanding settlement also acquired the name of Westward Ho![3][4] The exclamation mark is therefore an intentional part of the village's name. It is the only such place name in the British Isles;[5] Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Quebec, shares the distinction of having an exclamation mark in its name.

It is noteworthy, though that Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! has two of the buggers.

With a dire weather forecast for our Monday tee time, we rushed from Cornwall to play Sunday afternoon.  It's rather a short trip, so we went to the club early and had a bite to eat, perhaps the best toastie of my young life.  A toastie is nothing more than a grilled cheese, but this was done on fresh roll and piled high with bacon and sausage.  Theresa regrets not having taken a photo of the behemoth....

The clubhouse immediately charmed us.  It was bustling with members in form their rounds, with ints flowing liberally.   The photo below, taken from our seat in the bar where we ate, is of their J.H. Taylor wall.  He was a 5-time Open champion and a native son of the club.

The club has quite the amazing collection of artifacts:

And the locker room is simply perfect:

You can almost smell the damp tweed, cantcha?

The course was originally laid out in 1864 by Old Tom Morris, though the modifications began almost immediately.  Tom Doak had this to say:

A course that retains the rough and rugged spirit of the game as it was played 150 years ago, when Horace Hutchison and his compatriots cut the holes for the day with a pocketknife on their way out, and marked them with feathers.

It's hard to call this one of the best courses in the world by any modern standard...but like Prestwick or Askernish it is a must-see for anyone who wants to understand what the game is really about. 

James Finnegan with a concurring opinion:

The word shrine can properly be applied to Royal North Devon Golf Club, one of the four or five most important golf clubs in England. 

We met this young man, named Louis before teeing off.  He plays off a five, and was there for an important match that we followed onto the golf course.  Alas, he went down 4&2.

The most recognized feature on the golf course are these deep bunkers that the players must carry off the fourth tee.  They call those wooden supports sleepers, and it's some 190 yards to carry.

I manged it without incident, but my laying companion caught the top left of the sleepers and kicked hard left.  She had played a second ball, so we could have retrieved it and moved on, but where's the fun in that.  I had a go at playing out towards the green, with amusing results:

The ball, seen above, banged the top of the sleepers but did hop out of the bunker.  Like the more famous revetted faces, the sleepers angle away from the player, and balls with any forward momentum will often climb the remainder of the face.  

The course is laid out on extremely flat land, common land at that.  At the far end of the property one sees a huge rock wall separating the course from the sea, rocks laid there naturally by the tides.

The camera flattens the perspective, but this wall is some 8-10 feet high.

From most vantage points, the water is not visible over the wall, but one sees the cars parked and the surfers donning their wet suits.  It's along this wall that we walked the next day to find the Hocker's truck from the prior post.

A bit later, from the ninth tee, we do espy to water:

Because it's common land, as is typical for many of the oldest courses in these parts, we share the course with access roads, including hikers and cyclists.  This is mostly a pleasant feature, as we see families and children enjoying their Sunday afternoon.  But they also seem at times far too trusting of our ability to control our golf balls, and the mothers that allow their children to build sand castles in bunkers very much in play are hard to fathom.  Several times we have to call them off....

The other notable feature of Westward Ho! are the sea rushes, a term I had never heard previously.  Here's the technical description:

Juncus kraussii commonly known as salt marsh rush, sea rush, jointed rush, matting rush or dune slack rush, is of the monocot family Juncaceae and genus Juncus. It grows in Salt marshes, estuarine and coastal areas.[1] This species is ideal as a stabilizer in estuary banks and riparianzones that adjoin developed areas[2] it prevents erosion and provides an excellent fibre for weaving.[3]The plant is named after a German naturalist and museum curator, Christian Krauss, who travelled to South Africa.

They may be fine for weaving, but they're hell on golfers.  Here's what they look like (with Louis' match in the foreground):

On the Par-5 ninth my ball ended up barely in their clutches, and I was able to chip it out left-handed.  But any further into the dense plant, and we'd have reached into our pocket for another Chrome Soft X.

The rushes are everywhere in clusters in the middle of the routing, closest to the sea.  Several of the tee boxes are placed within them, such as this:

The club has been home to many notable personages in our game.  First, the above-referenced Horace Hutchinson, a noted amateur player and golf writer that did much to popularize the game.  Amusingly, in 1875 he won a competition that automatically made him Captain of the club, the amusement deriving from the fact that he was then twelve years old.  The rule was quickly changed...

J.H. Taylor caddied for Hutchinson in his youth, and is assumed to have picked up his slashing, aggressive style of golf from him.  Taylor remained tied to the club his entire life, and died at age 92 in a cottage overlooking the links, which he called "The finest view in Christendom."  And Horace Hilton, one of the great players of his era and one of only three men to win The Open as an amateur, called it the finest competitive links in England.  

The course can be stretched to 7,000 yards, but that strikes me as an unforced error.  Westward Ho! to me is best appreciated with its place in the history of our game firmly in mind.  The holes are not especially dramatic or memorable for today's player, though the links is hardly a pushover.  But it's the appreciation of playing the same ground with featheries that's most satisfying.  And yes, the thought of cutting the holes with a knife and leaving a feather to mark it as well.

The club was especially accommodating to our change of schedule as well.  On short notice they were able to catch Simon coming off the course after playing in the morning, and he provided wonderful company on the links:

And he insisted on taking this photo for us as well:

And he also bought us a drink in the then-deserted bar after our round, introducing Theresa to a newly-discovered tonic water named Fever-Tree.  She seemed to approve....

That's all for England, and after breakfast we shall be headed towards Wales.