CRAVEN COTTAGE The Royal County Down Golf Course (PBUI) has been on its present site since being laid out in 1889 by Tom Morris at a rip off cost of £4.

In the 1960s caravans started appearing in the dunes to the right of the 12th hole on the Anneseley Course (Aka No 2 Course, Ladies Course, Hen Run)Then someone built himself a permanent structure a good forty yards from the edge of the fairway (see image-click on it and you can see golfers tip toeing past)-how they got planning permission to put something which was not 'mobile' in this area I do not know but the caravans are now formally in a 'park' and a blot on the landscape they certainly are. And this is an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty! The other image is of the Mournes providing a back cloth to the course, beyond the 12th-as seen from the offending 'cottage'. The scenery looking the other way is less edifying

About a year ago some inaccurate golfer gigantically hooked his drive from the 12th tee and struck the cottage. Litigation broke out and the hole was temporally remodeled (into a short par 3) to prevent long shots from the tee so as to lessen the danger of collateral damage. Apparently an over enthusiastic player managed to strike the building with his second (or even fifteenth) shot thus provoking another rash of solicitors letters to the highheidyins of the RCCDGC (PBUI)Now the entire fairway is to to be moved to the left, virtually creating a new hole at the modest cost of not less than £250,000. It would have been better to buy the wretched target house and bull doze it into the sea. At an earlier hole-the third tee has a notice forbidding men to play off it as it is dangerously close to a row of expensive houses which have been there for the last thirty years. Men are moved forward and well to the right thus shortening and ruining an outstanding golfing hole Seeing some of the massive female golfers who infest this course in action I am not sure that the denizens of 'Dun Golfin' or 'Tired Bankin' to the left of the ladies tee are any safer than many parts of Baghdad, but there you go.

On the whole this is craven behaviour by the golfers. They are still bruised by the massive damages paid out to some chancer who managed to overturn his rented golf buggy as the hill he was driving up was 'too steep for safety' They paid up and

sold the buggies.

When I find a few very elderly golf balls I know where I am going for a bit of target practice.

See you in court

Labels: Caravanners, Damages, Norn Iron, Royal County Down

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