Pitchmarks #53 - 30th June 2024 - "Over the Hills and Far Away..."

From the back of the twelfth; “Braid’s Way”.

“…it is so unlike anything else, perched on the roof of the world…”
Bernard Darwin, on Welshpool

At last, these four wheels are heading for Welshpool, after an aborted mission a year back and a number of failed attempts to align the stars, and various diaries. My route skirts beneath Birmingham, after which the landscape opens up into border country, crossing into Wales under Middletown Hill, whose lofty peak is cloaked by thick cloud. For the final, steep climb into the car park, I flick from the podcast that has kept me company to the radio, and from some realm deep in my past comes Robert Plant’s voice, and Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away”.

As the track fades, this single-track road cuts through what I will later realise are the last two holes, and I pass a large Welsh flag that is hanging on for dear life, and stop moving beside the sixteenth tee. All around are ridges and hills, and here and there I spot other flags, perched upon horizons for the enjoyment - or torture - of the humble golfer in this epic topography. Welshpool is, as my dictated notes from the outward journey record, “golf on the side of a mountain”, and that the recommendations to visit came largely from folk similarly enchanted by Cleeve Hill seems appropriate, though the bleak plateau from which Cleeve keeps watch over Cheltenham is replaced here by lush, rumpled peaks and troughs.

In the bar, Adam provides a warm welcome as the roll-up congregate to lick their wounds, and I am charmed by the friendliness of these intrepid explorers. Egg cartons full of reclaimed golf balls are stacked beside the office, and I wonder whether I ought to buy a batch, given the various distant targets visible through the window, but get distracted, and forget. Adam can’t find some printed map of the routing, and I wonder whether I’ll ever be seen again, for he seems worried, but he at least tells me where to start, and which traverse my round will begin with.

This lack of a map - or more accurately, a clear intention - is a recurrent theme from the interview which got me to the base of Welshpool’s range of hills. Journeys such as this have been chosen more on a whim than with any clarity of intention, and as the first fairway swings right and up to a small green in the heavens, I wonder where all this roaming, and writing, is heading, for each mission only seems to make sense when looking back. Plant’s voice is with me as drizzle starts to settle on my jacket, and “many times I've gazed along the open road” sums up the dreamy state that takes over on such voyages.

Despite Adam’s concern, I manage to trace the routes from tee to green and hole to hole without problems, and though it is early June, I am grateful for the layers I have on, for a cool wind brings with it waves of punishing rain. I am alone in the Welsh hills while the morning players huddle in the bar, but the golf is wonderful, and wild. This land doesn’t need the complication of bunkers; the brilliance of the green sites and many protective hollows provide more than enough peril for my dwindling supply of balls.

By the time I reach the turn I have spent at least three, but the clubhouse is half a world away, so I try and pay attention, and keep each shot in play. When the rain ceases on the eleventh, the blustery breeze wicks dry my clothes, and from nowhere, the sun emerges, bleaching these damp hills golden in a flash. And with that, my spirits lift and my golf starts to flow, and James Braid’s Welshpool ramps up a gear in celebration.

From the twelfth tee, I gasp first at the view, then at the challenge ahead, for the fairway is as a mirage in the desert. From here, I cannot tell if the carry is a couple of hundred yards or miles, but the newly released sun glints off a distant marker post and dares me to attack. Between us lies a forest of bracken and gorse, but that podcast is still on my mind, and I mutter to myself - shy to hear my voice though I am utterly alone up here, bar some mewing buzzard - some clear intention, for a change.

The sound of this awkward affirmation drifts off across the valley, and somehow the world is listening, and my ball soars in the air for a few breathless seconds, and floats towards that distant, metal guide. I can’t see it land, so scramble down the path into the canyon, and my legs and my heart throb as I regain the height on the other side. I have all but given up on this second-hand TaylorMade when I spot it, beyond the marker on the last stripe of the fairway, and though the only score I am keeping is the supply of remaining “ammo”, I feel a small, private triumph at this unlikely - yet predicted - miracle.

The hole - a marvel in this light - turns hard left for the green, and buoyed by this brave tee-shot, I affirm my intentions for a strong second, and smile to myself and the universe as another good swing manifests, and the ball lands softly beside the pin. I congratulate myself on the putt before holing it, and wonder how many times I will need to be told to do this - to work with stated intention, and courage, and ambition - before it will sink in. Without such direction, and commitment, nothing of value comes to be.

No golf course on the side of a mountain; no effortless three up the twelfth. No writing, no books. No Led Zeppelin. All of it comes from some decision to try, and though I feel a lonely fool to hear my stumbling voice in this remote corner of Braid’s rugged empire, I need to ingrain this lesson so I can take it back down the hill, and to Machynlleth, and tomorrow, and so on.

Finally, the lack of a map takes its toll, and I arrive at the winter tee for the thirteenth, “Braid’s Way”. My cleats are still damp, and though it is warming up, summer hasn’t really found Welshpool yet. So I play from here, and flush a five iron that Braid himself might have enjoyed, soaring over the crest of another ridge. And I tell the wind what sort of a seven iron I will hit from there towards the angled marker in the distance, and again golf hears my tender hopes, and delivers to this hidden green my latest ball.

“Braid’s Way”

The work of James Braid - my tormentor as a junior through the corridors of Wenvoe Castle, a couple of hours south of here - gets overshadowed a bit by the architectural giants that followed him. But in his eighty years, he touched around four hundred courses, as well as winning five Opens and serving as Walton Heath’s professional for the club’s first forty-five years. And a common theme in the fraction of his legacy I’ve seen is his genius in finding holes across extraordinary ground. Welshpool fits that description perfectly; “Braid’s Way” the poster child for it.

And of course, the ball decides to roll straight in for another three, though I barely line it up, and of course, the ball is then lost from the fourteenth tee, and when I glance at the tee marker while picking up my peg, “Graveyard” makes sense as an hole name, and the decision to not buy an egg tray of foundlings seems edgier still. But my last scruffy sphere makes it to the end, sailing down the dogleg seventeenth against a sky that is turning purple, and at the last, golf drags me back with a final flourish - a chip that hovers on the lip before giving way to gravity; a reward for the long journey here.

The clubhouse and car park are deserted, so rather than walking in to thank the kind staff who’ve let me invade their hilltop kingdom, I gaze back at this panorama of remote pins and hidden adventures, and thank James Braid, instead. For another sublime afternoon in the grip of the game he mastered, and another unlikely spot for some glorious, marvellous golf. Welshpool and its flags may be “over the hills and far away”, but now I’ve seen it, I’ll be back - just as soon as I can.

“Mellow is the man who knows what he's been missing
Many, many men can't see the open road”
Led Zeppelin - “Over the Hills and Far Away”