Favorite Minigolf Courses in the UK
One of the great things about the UK is that you’re never more than 70 or so miles away from the sea, which means that you’re very close to seaside holiday resorts and so you’re never far away from a Miniature Golf course!
That’s not to say that all of the UK’s 600-plus Miniature Golf, Crazy Golf and Adventure Golf courses are all beside the seaside, but a great many of them are.
Miniature Golf is known by a number of names, including Crazy Golf and Adventure Golf and at the heart of each of these variations the aim of the game is to score a hole-in-one, or at least get the ball into the hole in fewer shots than your opponent!
You can pick up a Putter and play a Minigolf course, a quintessential British Seaside Pastime if ever there was one, in most towns and cities in Britain and in a fair few villages too. Courses can be found along Promenades, on Piers, in Shopping Centres, in Pub Beer Gardens, amongst other places.
A Windmill on the Crazy Hills Putting course in Weston Super Mare
Traditional Crazy Golf courses, often featuring the all important Windmill, have seemingly been at the seaside forever, and they still exist and remain popular with groups and families. There are also a new wave of indoor Adventure Golf courses with Jungle, Pirate and Dinosaur themes opening up inland and often taking inspiration from the types of courses that were previously only likely to be found in the US.
Playing the Lost World Adventure Golf course in Hemsby
Among the top spots for a round of Miniature Golf in Great Britain you can head to Skegness in Lincolnshire where you can take your pick from eight courses of all shapes, sizes and themes. Great Yarmouth in Norfolk is another very good place to practice your Putting skills as there are six courses along the seafront. Other top locations for Crazy Golfing include Blackpool in Lancashire where there are eight courses to choose from. You’ll also find plenty of courses to play in Wales with over 50 to tackle and there are courses springing up in Scotland with Aberdeen, Dunfermline and Glasgow home to new Adventure Golf courses.
The Blackpool Pleasure Beach Adventure Golf course
For those that want to take the game to the next level you can head to Hastings, East Sussex, where the three-course, 54-hole seafront Adventure Golf complex is also home to the World Crazy Golf Championship which is held every October in often very traditional British weather for the time of year.
Richard Gottfried plays the first hole on the Arnold Palmer Crazy Golf Course at the World Crazy Golf Championships in Hastings
Author Bio
Richard Gottfried is a Champion Minigolfer and Great Britain International and is on a Crazy World of Minigolf Tour of the UK’s Minigolf & Crazy Golf courses, visiting over 400 to date. He regularly blogs about his journeys and adventures in the World of Minigolf (and in other sports and games) at The Ham & Egger Files.
© Richard Gottfried 2011
I learned of the English’s love of Crazy Golf during a weekend spent in Devon visiting family, three games in three days. A definite Crazy Golf overload! I won’t be playing for a long while… or at least not until my next getaway to the seaside.
Erin x
Comment by Erin — September 1, 2011 @ 7:23 pm