Great Western Coffee Shop

My "on this day" has just flagged up "Scottish Golf by Train website registered" on 10th April 2014, though it now appears to be seated at the 19th without golfing content.   Ah well - a search for golf by train gave me a number of results, many of which appear to refer to places north of the border:

https://www.golfbreaks.com/en-gb/inspiration/articles/golf-courses-near-train-stations/


https://migrantgolfer.com/2486/golfing-by-train-in-scotland/


Interesting reads for this Bank Holiday Monday, although I've not (yet) heard of may of our members going on the train to their golf clubs. Of course, YOU may be a closet golfer ... do you play golf?  Do you get to the club by train or have you ever done so?  Where are there golf clubs served by GWR that people could go to by train?

Denham Golf Club ?
Ansdell and Fairhaven - Royal Lytham GC

The 2021 at Royal St George's, Sandwich an enhance train service was run from St Pancras 

Within fairly recent memory, a... large golf tournament near Southport brought a charter train to Ormskirk. (The train arrived from the north, not just because the configuration of the track at Ormskirk is somewhat bizarre and possibly in need of improvement). But this is a long way from Great Western territory and it's unlikely that any member of this forum will know the area at all.

Mark

Denham Golf Club (the club rather than the station) has recently upgraded the access path onto the course from Denham Golf Club station, though they still don't seem to be actively promoting it.  They don't give directions by public transport on their website and the only mention of the station is a warning to avoid car satnavs sending you to it.  I did once come across a golfer arriving by train, but it's very rare and not encouraged by the poor train service.  The name is a nice historical quirk but the station really should have been renamed Higher Denham long ago, perhaps at the same time as one of Chiltern's renamings of their station at Wembley, or the Bicester Town/Village change.

Exeter University Golf Club members frequently travel to Dawlish Warren by train.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/ainsmap.jpg)

You see the yellow pin - where my parents lived when I was born, and first few memories.  But in those days, it was just the one side road off the road to the beach and we were the last house before the sand hills.   I can understand that a special from the north would more easily do a bus transfer from Ormskirk that trying to get to Hillside.

P.S. I've only been one round on a golf course ...

OK I fess up, I was hoping you'd pick that up, Mr Ellis.

Thinking of the coffee shop though, from the lettering on the retained building in the photo in the docks at close-at-hand Liverpool, not even the GWR was too far away. (Look for the right hand dry dock gate, and then the lettering on the red brick building above and to the right of it. Photo from 2015)

Mark

(https://i.postimg.cc/rmsr0tCN/liverpool-waterfront-full.jpg)

GWR in its pre-nationalisation guise went up all the way to Birkenhead with its lines and trains, and as I understand it the depot in the Liverpool Docks was for freight handling for that city via ferries acrosss the Mersey.   Reading up over the weekend, in those days lots of shunting was done by horses, and I noted that their main stables were in London and Birmingham, whereas these days a GWR train in Birmingham would look very much out of territory.

Not me - I don't know one end of a golf bat from the other.

Nor am I a golfer - I did once manage to get round the local pitch-and-putt in under 100, and decided that golf is not for me.

Me neither. I don't like the way the ball dodges out of the way when you try to hit it.

Joke golf balls are available on line.
There are two common types, one is made of plaster of paris, looks and feels like a real ball but explodes in a cloud of powder when struck with the bat.
The others are made with an off-center weight such that they cant roll in a straight line.

Most entertaining ;D

Some people consider that hitting a sitting ball is unsporting.

Golf by train?

"A good train journey spoiled." (not Mark Twain)

It was popular amongst other pilots in my former club (not golf). It was not unusual for three of them to book out an aircraft, fly somewhere with a golf course and landing somewhere on the way to give everybody a turn at driving, then fly back to land at Filton, next to the golf course. You couldn't fill all four seats and have room for a golf bag, and arguments sometimes broke out over whose bag of bats to take - taking three was just too much weight.

Many airfields have golf courses adjacent, or golf courses have airfields adjacent, whatever. It is for a reason, as you will find if you are playing there one day, and suddenly hear nothing instead of the sound of an engine at full power that was apparent moments earlier. A pilot attempting a forced landing on a golf course after an engine failure at take-off is supposed to shout "Fore!", but they sometimes forget.

Harrison Ford famously crash landed on a golf course near an airfield.

(https://i.ibb.co/WgYpDY8/STILLford.jpg)

Golfers there were disappointed that Mr Ford didn't follow etiquette and replace his divot. :P

It looks a decent enough landing in the circumstances. That PT-22 Recruit might well have returned to the skies, with just a little unbending and a new wick for the engine.