Pitchmarks #62 - 1st September 2024 - "Borth picks up where nature ends"

The relentless flapping of the tent canvas carries on through the night, like some ambient symphony of the coastal wind, but it is the clatter of the first train that wakes me, and from that moment on, sleep is a distant, estranged relative. And so the dog stands patiently, waiting for her leash, and we quietly peel back the zip and emerge into the cool, early morning.

Above our pitch, the Welsh flag in the garden of a neighbouring house is held horizontal, its frayed ends pointing north-east at the dark silhouettes of Snowdonia though the tongue of the Red Dragon - “Y Ddraig Goch” - is extended towards the dunes of Ynyslas, from beyond which we can now hear persistent waves.

We pass the sign that warns those crossing the course of flying golf balls, but it is still way too dark for that, so we turn right, and tread the firm fairway of the fifth hole, heading towards the Dyfi estuary, beyond which lies that other great links of this stretch of Cardigan Bay, Aberdovey. By another flapping silk at the eighth green, we turn left, and walk the next two holes back towards the beach, where the tide has retreated from the rocks, now slapping onto pristine sand.

From the twelfth tee, the view in all directions is breathtaking. The angle of play is over rugged dunes, with only a lonely marker post to help, but beyond that, the houses of Borth itself rise with the land to the war memorial. Sweeping left, our eyes catch the first light lurking behind the hills from which the mighty Severn gathers, up near Llanidloes. Out to sea, the white crests of the waves are silver in the morning light, though they will shortly bleach to gold when the sun clambers into view and bursts through the clouds.

The challenge from the thirteenth tee is ominous even without a ball, and I am struck by how Borth seems to represent boundaries. It sits at the very edge of this rugged landscape, and the course itself weaves through a narrow strip of fine turf on which other defined limits are imposed…the road that bisects the course, the house past which the fourth hole plays. The sea wall is a factor on many of the early and late holes here, and after a gentle opener, the second makes its way through an ominous wedge between the road and the beach, the incessant wind making things harder still.

Beyond the sleepers, the tide has slipped away to reveal the Bronze Age woodland that a vicious storm unearthed back in 2010 - the remnants of oak, pine, alder and beech tree stumps, preserved in acidic peat for a few thousand years. It is somehow humbling to step between these relics, and the sign that the council have placed to explain “The Submerged Forest” tells the legend of “Cantre’r Gwaelod”, a Welsh Atlantis that disappeared under prehistoric sands. In conclusion, it suggests that “if you listen carefully, perhaps you will hear the bells of the lost kingdom ringing beneath the waves”, but for now, the border is inside that ancient settlement, and it is the ghosts of the thousands of hardy golfers that have walked this turf - the oldest golf course in Wales - that I listen for in the endless whip of the flags.

We walk beyond the course and down into town, and by the time we loop back up past the clubhouse to stroll the first few holes en route to breakfast, an early pair are setting the pace as the shadows fade and the whole gorgeous landscape comes alive. As they walk off the fourth tee, one nods as the other walks bent into the gusting wind that has stolen his ball, and another train rattles past on the way to Dovey Junction and beyond. The rest of town is still asleep but the four of us are very much awake out here.

I’d come away feeling stuck, uninspired. Nothing flowing, everything awkward - on and off the golf course. But in the simple routine of walking the dog, Borth & Ynyslas has once again lit something in me, all doubts flushed away in the gale, to leave behind only a wide-eyed freshness. Here, between the wild sea and the high mountains, where the dunes and the waves and the wind and the rust just belong - here, everything feels natural and right. And I feel like I belong here, too, somehow.

My eyes are ablaze as the sun finally sets the grass alight; my ears in rapture at the sounds of the seaside wafting across this primal scene. My heart sings and my mind races, and - even without swinging a club - Borth’s medicine has put me right again. As it always will. The wind has brought tears down my cheeks but they are joined by those borne of happiness - I am so very happy to be here and happier still that golf like this survives, persists.

Marc Chagall once said that “great art picks up where nature ends”, and I will forever see his paintings differently after reading that. But for “great art”, we might easily swap “great golf”, for wild places like this are where golf is meant to be played, not on gentle, manicured gardens. For me, at least.

Or maybe, since few places are so staggeringly precious, we ditch “great” and “art” and “golf” altogether and just say what we really mean.

“Borth picks up where nature ends”.