The Golf Between Us

Taking a long, languid walk along the coast between Pevensey Bay and Bexhill in the dog days of the summer holidays, my tranquil enjoyment of the calm sea, the warming sun and the pale blue sky was disturbed. Not by the rattle of the occasional train on the East Coastway Line, nor by families on the beach determined to wring out the last drops of summer fun from a mainly soggy August. What disturbed me was the sound of violence: shouts and blows.

Just past Normans Bay, the countryside above the coastline turns from coarse flat farmland to manicured and modest undulations. And it was from there that the sound – and accompanying sights – were coming. A man, dressed in bright checked clothing, was swearing loudly and beating the undergrowth at the edge of the verdant fairway. That was when I remembered: at this point on the coastal path, a narrow road is all that separates walkers from Cooden Beach golf course. It was Mark Twain who described golf as “a good walk spoiled” and, in my case, it was.

Golf is very popular in the affluent counties of southern England. There are some 30 golf clubs in East Sussex and, with the typical course occupying 120 acres, this means that it dominates huge swathes of countryside and hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are guzzled up by the greens and fairways, each day. As a sport, it is not exactly jumpers for goalposts. The resources required to play 18 holes have a massive environmental impact.

The world of golf is now responding to the need to be greener with smarter design so that courses occupy less land and require less water. But it is not the environmental aspect that makes me object to golf. Its popular image as a sport for businessmen – deals done on the course, especially the 19th hole – middle-managers and off-duty policeman is anathema to any liberal-minded soul. It is the sport of the social-climber, the arriviste, the nouveau riche, the petit bourgeois. In the 1980s television series The Wind in the Willows, based on Kenneth Grahame’s Edwardian children’s novel, the ludicrous Mr Toad takes up one fad after another; one of his crazes being, of course, golf. But it is in J.B. Priestley’s 1945 stage play, An Inspector Calls, that literature gives us definitive guidance on golf. When the pompous capitalist, Birling, tries to intimidate the avenging socialist, Inspector Goole, by telling him that he plays golf with his boss the Chief Constable, Goole replies drily and simply, “I don’t play golf”.

Gale Force

The persistent December rain has meant that orchards and fields, hillsides and woodlands have become sodden quagmires, almost impossible for walking. When I proposed to the family that the final walk of the year needed to be a rain-soaked coastline trek on sturdy pebbles, to blow away the Christmas cobwebs, my idea was met with dumb incredulity. Only the dogs seemed interested: but the short-legged one is Scottish and stubborn and I knew he would renege on his word as soon as he felt a stiff breeze; the long-legged one will go anywhere, in any weather, if it means being out of the house and getting sight of a sausage-flavoured dog treat; so only he made the cut. Luckily, he cannot understand the shipping forecast: “Thames, Dover, Wight: southwesterly gale force 8 increasing severe gale force 9 imminent; rough becoming very rough; rain or squally showers; moderate becoming poor.”

With trees blown down, homes flooded and power out in a host of places, there is much for people in south coast counties to worry about. If the litany of the shipping forecast can usually make the threat of force 12 hurricane winds appear benign, getting Alan Bennett to read it on Radio 4 this week was a masterstroke of panic management. His soft Leeds cadence made it sound as though we will never know fear again, even if the forecast was one from October. The roll call of sea areas – Forties, Cromarty, Forth…Sole, Lundy, Fastnet…Shannon, Rockall, Malin – is poetic balm to soothe the soul.

My plan was to start early on Cooden beach, in sea area Dover, and walk far enough west until I was in sea area Wight. If a trans-sea area walk seemed ambitious, the location of the boundary between the two, at Sovereign Harbour in Eastbourne, made it a reasonable round trip of 10 miles. But when I arrived at Cooden, it was high tide and the gale forecast for the coast was already battering the beach. The strip of pebbles between the crashing waves and the coastal road was so narrow that I thought the dog might be swept away or run over; but we made it through to the safety of the broader beach.

There is something strangely attractive about a coastal walk on a wild winter day: the lowering sky, the salty sea-spumed air limiting the vision, and the lack of any other people all make it a beautiful but desolate experience. And this morning’s Beaufort scale force 9 gale, although not quite full in the face, made westerly progress slow; even a solitary gull struggled. But we carried on past the caravan parks of Norman's Bay - as deserted as cemeteries - and the residents of beach-front houses, peering out anxiously at the turbulent swell.

I felt exhausted as we neared Pevensey Bay, but a fortifying glimpse of brightness between the clouds spurred me on. The tide having receded a little, we were able to walk on the more compacted surface nearer the shoreline and the dog even attempted a frolic or two. But as we left Pevensey, the coast curved southwards and the relentless gale became a headwind. With the return walk in mind, my resolve deserted me and, a mile from the harbour, we turned around.

With the wind behind us, we veritably sailed back to Cooden; and, of course, by the time we returned the weather was abating: “Thames, Dover, Wight: southwesterly 5 to 7; moderate or rough; rain then showers; moderate becoming good.”