Pitchmarks #57 - 28th July 2024 - "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"

Silloth’s nineteenth is almost as lovely as the holes that have gone before…

Everybody seems to wonder
What it's like down here
I gotta get away
from this day-to-day
running around,
Everybody knows
this is nowhere.

“Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”; Neil Young

Quite often, it is simply an unusual name that will grab my attention. Silloth on Solway sounds interesting, before I even know a single thing about the course. So I ask a few friends who have been, and they sort of unite on a theme…that I must go there. Must, not should. No mention is made of the fact that the cobbled town streets are a detour from anywhere other than Silloth itself, but we can all tell that from the map. It goes without saying, until Alan - the Secretary whose warm welcome seems to sum up the atmosphere of this charming club - mentions that the nearest Top 100 courses to Silloth are a couple of hours away.

Whether you could call a course with a cult reputation a “hidden gem” is in doubt, but it is certainly a remote spot. More than once I consider bailing out on the time I have reserved, for it will put significant pressure on a journey towards the ferry terminal at Oban, and with a day’s play in front of me, it could be slow. But as the sun peers through the clouds, and the radio reports heavy winds and rain in Ayrshire, I take a western turn from the motorway a little shy of Carlisle, and once again trust in the opinions of those intrepid folk who have gone before.

On the putting green beneath the dark fells of the northern Lakes I am introduced to Scott, who has recently joined the club from Oklahoma, and his wife Tami, who walks with us today. For them this is a maiden voyage to Silloth, though they know the headline British links well, and I feel awkward gate-crashing their first date with this stretch of land. But they are kind, and happy to be here, and to share their first impressions with mine. For the next few hours, Scott is either smiling or laughing, and I am as thrilled to see his evident delight as he is to meet his Silloth.

The course begins as it means to go on - an inviting drive into the breeze, and firm turf leading to a partially hidden green. The dunes dominate the landscape, and it is evident that the next few hours will be spent exploring the various ridges and hollows that millennia have crafted. A course with many marker poles and ancient bells appeals to me, and here we have plenty to help these virginal explorers find their bearings, and their golf balls.

Early on the holes carve out gentle corridors, with gaps through which Southerness to the west and Scafell Pike to the south-east are visible, and as we come to grips with some terrific greens, and suffer on some immaculate run-offs, it all feels very intimate here. At the fifth, we break towards the deserted beach of the Solway Firth, and stand gazing at the wild environment in all directions. The course has evolved over the years, and a delightful booklet on such developments attributes the creation of the course to “two men from the Lothians, David Grant & Willie Park Jnr, touched with a little stardust from Dr Alister MacKenzie, but with a glorious contribution from Mother Nature herself”, and Silloth’s rugged pedigree is plain for all to see.

While the elite players suffer up the road at The Postage Stamp, we face our own short hole across the wind at the ninth, but negotiate these hundred and twenty-odd yards in just five between us, evading all seven bunkers more through luck than skill. At the furthest point, the wicked tenth swings left round a gorse-clad hillock, and from hereon we get the sense of playing back into town the way many of the great links courses do. Thirteen takes us south again for a moment, though it is worth it for the thrill of playing along a proud runway, reminiscent of Rye’s magnificent fourth.

As the roofs and sounds of the town start to dominate the right hand flank of the closing holes, we spot those heading out way behind us, and I have that familiar feeling - the one that Minch Old, and Cleeve, and Durness give me - of wanting to just carry on going until the light or my stash of balls runs out. We join another pair for the final few holes, and Fran and Jamie know the place well but haven’t lost a flicker of the enchantment that Scott and I have in our eyes today.

Fran recounts that his friends down south are often bemused at his choice of a links course, for his drive is here epic by most people’s standards. But when they come along for the ride, one by one, they too fall for Silloth on Solway, and from then on only focus on making sure the next date for this outpost of golfing excellence is in the diary. And then - as if I wasn’t already doing the same, trying to work out a reasonable excuse to drag my clubs up here again - I ask him about Windermere, which has been mentioned by a couple of friends who know my palate by now.

And he confirms its excellence, and adds an even more compelling recommendation to my bulging bucket of places to go and see - Dunnerholme. “Ten holes”, he says. “Grazed land”. “The place where I fell in love with this game”, and that he still holds this in his heart a few decades later splits me apart and I know deep down that I will be back in this neck of the fells before too long, and that I will get to meet Silloth again. I am heading for Scotland, where golf began, but not for the first time I am staggered at the sheer depth and variety of golf south of the ancient divide.

We hole out, shake hands, and go our separate ways, but I am left humbled by the kindness of strangers once more, and cheered by this day in the wild edge of Cumbria. A further few hours pass as the clouds break and darkness falls across the west coast, and the van rumbles towards the ferry terminal with Neil Young’s pining voice vibrating through the seat, as if he is once again singing for me…“I wish that I could be there, right now, just passing time”.

Silloth on Solway may be in the middle of nowhere, as “everybody knows”. But sometimes we focus too much on convenience, at the expense of sheer, open-mouthed delight. George Mallory once trained in the hills that lurk on Silloth’s horizon, for the expeditions that would cost him his life a century ago. And when asked why he wanted to climb Everest, he replied “because it’s there”. And that’s sort of how I feel about this place. It is very, very special. Off you go!

Silloth, and my fellow debutant Scott, smiling all the way!

(with thanks to Alan Oliver for the warm welcome; Scott, Tami, Fran & Jamie for your company and patience; Cookie Jar Golf for this excellent film that piqued my interest in the first place: https://cookiejargolf.com/story-of-a-golf-club-silloth-on-solway/; and John Pearson for the excellent booklet on the course’s evolution. Clubs should do this more often!)