In June/July this year we took our first major holiday without Liam. Neither one of us really likes looking at museums, churches or scenery so Bruce felt the best option was for a golfing holiday in Asia. Rosie wasn’t keen on this idea so he organised a trip to England via Thailand to test the golfing waters. We flew into Chiang Mai, which is a walled city in the North of Thailand. Like most of these cities in Thailand, Chiang Mai was once the capital and is the largest city in the North.
Our first game of golf was at Alpine Golf Resort and Rosie was very impressed. She had her own golf cart and a caddy to help her to navigate the course. She appreciated the hints on where to play and how to putt. All up she was converted to Asian Golf holidays. This was the beginning of the Darby Burnett World Golf Tour (click on link, or the menu item, to see how this is progressing.
The first night, we caught the hotel bus to the night markets and had a really nice walk around and then dinner at the Kalare Night Bazaar. This was a great place, with several choices and a huge amount of activity. We loved it.
The next day, Bruce planned a walking trip around the inner city. It was very hot and humid, but we still got out for a walk to view a couple of Wats and the wall. Rosie is standing in front of the Tha Phae Gate, which is one of the parts or the original wall that has been restored to its former glory.
After about an hour, we decided that walking around in this heat was not our idea of fun and once you have seen one Wat, you have seen all the Wats that you need to see. Back to the hotel and the pool, with a beer stop for Bruce.
Kalare Night markets had an entertainment rotunda, where each night a performance took place. The Lady Boys were very entertaining and if we had more time, we most probably would have gone to see there show, that was situated just to the side of the market.
We did do a bit more touring, which we quite enjoyed, but didn’t see anything that we would want to go see again, since it was so different to everything else.
Rosie absolutely loved the food, which was great. It is the first holiday we have been on where Rosie was in her element with eating.
We travelled back to Bangkok after a few days in preparation for flying onto London, but during the rest day, Bruce organised a trip to a sister school in Bangkok – Suankularbwittayalai Nonthaburi School where he was met by English teacher Pattaranee Vega
The day started out a little tense, with Vega not sure about me, but she had a very good day planned for my visit. I wanted to see some maths classes and also take a look around the school to see how it compared with our school.
The school had two sections, one for Thai students and the other for international students. The international section was much more modern and air-conditioned, but this section enabled the other section to run properly. Bruce first went to the new section but then asked to see the other part of the school
Bruce went into one of the upper school maths classes and was surprised to see over 40 students in an un-airconditioned room.
They were all very attentive as he walked around. One of the braver girls asked whether he could help her with a question and then a few of the students also said they couldn’t do it and could he give demonstration to the class on how he would solve it.
Talking about stress. I took a look at the question and decided that I could solve it, but then wondered how they would solve it. Eventually I decided on an approach that I thought they would understand and went through it. When I looked at video of the demo later, it was amazing to see them all paying total attention.The teacher’s also were very interested in how I would do the question. At the end of the demo, the whole class clapped, a very unusual experience.
During my tour, I asked one of the male teachers why they were all wearing black, was it a uniform? No, they were all in mourning for the King, who died recently. My bright blue tie and white shirt did look out of place now.
At the end of the visit, Vega thanked me for coming and told me that I had made a very good impression. They were apprehensive about my visit since, unfortunately, a previous visit from our school didn’t go down so well.
Even though I had made a very good impression, the school still decided to end the sister school arrangement, which was sad.
Bruce loved the visit and was fascinated to see how other schools operate and how students behave. Walking around at recess and lunch was very interesting and several students wanted to interact with the red headed westerner.
The next day we flew to London arriving in the evening, where we picked up our hire car and proceeded to the Ibis Styles at Heathrow for the night. After this we drove to Bath for a few days.
Part of the plan for this trip was to go to all the towns that Rosie’s family had a connection to. Rosie has been very enthusiastic about her Ancestry, so we found ourselves travelling through small towns in search of cemeteries and churches. This also meant that we saw several sights not on the real tourist map. We also came across a small cafe so that we could have our first scones and tea. Very pleasant.
Stonehenge is not far from Bath so we went to visit this site. This is a tourist trap, where you can no longer get close to the rocks, but can walk around the outside. On the day we were there, they were holding a Druids ceremony so all the Druids and members of their coven were allowed inside Stonehenge. Most probably something to do with the Summer Solstice.
The next day we played our first golf game in England, playing at the Bath Golf Club, established in 1880. The game didn’t cost that much and we had a very good time. The course was set in the hills overlooking Bath and we had great views over the town. At one stage, one of the patrons built a replica castle front on the course “Sham Castle”, which you don’t see everyday. The course also had these interesting stone walls along a few of the fairways, most probably to keep the sheep in (in the early days of the course).
The next day we took a walking tour of Bath by a local guide. We found this tour very interesting and learnt a bit about fire insurance. If you had paid, then your building had a small symbol on it so the fire brigade knew they were supposed to save it, otherwise “let it burn”. We also saw “The Royal Crescent” which is a very interesting piece of town planning, with this whole row of townhouses built in a crescent shape. All the houses had to look the same, except one woman got special permission to paint her door yellow, instead of white. In the whole set of townhouses, it is the only non-white door.
After the tour we walked around Bath to view the Roman Baths and other sites. Bath is a very pretty city and very vibrant, we thoroughly enjoyed it.
We walked around looking at castles and lochs and generally just enjoying the atmosphere.
After Bath, we drove up to the Lakes District and stayed in Kendall. Here we played Kendall Golf Course. Bruce loved it, Rosie hated it. Every hole was either a steep climb up or steep climb down. The group in front hired a golf buggy and it couldn’t handle the slopes. They had to zigzag up and on a few occasions one had to get out and push to get up the hills. The cart was in good condition, the course was diabolical.
Again the views on the course were great and some of the obstacles interesting. Rosie had a blind shot over a wall on a par 3, she lost her ball when it made it over the wall only to fall into the bracken on the other side.
Throughout this holiday, we booked AirBnB’s and loved every one of them. They all had a bit of history about them and were situated in nice areas where we could walk into the towns and see the surrounding countryside.
The weather in the Lakes district was as good as you would hope, given it was summer, but this just meant we had to be organised with several sets of clothing options. It was nice to walk down to the local pubs and around the town to see what the locals got up to.
On one day, we took the ferry across the lake to Wray Castle, the boat ride was enjoyable, but the castle was no different to any other we have seen.
Off to golf again the next day and this time we played “Grange Over Sands”, this was a very flat course but was in good condition. We had a very nice game and after the game, enjoyed the small clubhouse and met the locals again. The views while walking on the course were again very worthwhile and seeing this from a distance is often more enjoyable than walking around inside.
After the Lakes District we entered Scotland and drove over to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is a really pretty city, which is famous for the Edinburgh Tattoo, which is a magnificent Military Tattoo. You can see the seating being set up behind Rosie in photo.
After Edinburgh we went to stay at Saint Monans, which is close to Saint Andrews and an easy drive to Dundee. Rosie was very keen to goto Dundee since her ancestors came from this area. We roamed around looking at houses where they lived. We saw some interesting suburbs while looking for these houses.
We also visited Trinity Church where one of her dubious relatives was stationed.
Saint Monans is a small fishing port and we had booked a lovely little cottage overlooking the boating harbour.
We could walk up from the house to the local pub, which was only open a few days of the week, obviously it wasn’t open the first night when we got there, so we had to keep walking until we found a fish and chip place.
From Saint Monans we drove over to Saint Andrews to see what all the fuss was about. To have played Saint Andrews we would have had to book months in advance and it would have cost us a lot of money. On the day we visited it was freezing cold and there was sleet. We took a walk around and weren’t that impressed with the course, it would have been very difficult to play mainly because of the ruff, which was very high grass. Otherwise the course was a big open paddock. After our walk around, we went to a nearby pub and laughed as players came in wearing full snow gear. It would not have been a pleasant day to play golf.
We did book a game of golf near where we were staying at Elmwood Golf Course. It only cost us 20 pound and the course was very interesting and fun. The usual rock walls went along between the fairways and old bridges and pathways made it a great experience.
We left Scotland and drove back into England. We drove down to York and booked a house on the outskirts of the walled city. We were able to walk into the old town and visit the pubs. Before lunch we had to walk around the wall and get an idea what the embattlements looked like.
York also gave us an interesting insight into the British culture of Hen’s nights. We saw a several groups as we walked around the town and they were having a great time. Later in the evening as we walked home, we got to see lots of drunken girls sitting on the sides of the roads being violently ill. It was just like watching a British reality show.
As usual, we managed to get in a game of golf, this time at “Forrest of Galtres” in York. We both struggled a bit at this course but loved the experience. Playing golf at the small regional courses around England has been a really good experience and showed us that you don’t need to pay a fortune for quality golf experiences that are not commercialised.
We finally returned to London, where we had to drop off the car. We were using our usual Google instructions, which were usually good, but can be surprising. We found ourselves in a huge queue of cars for one of our turns and then suddenly found ourselves turning onto London Bridge. We got to watch the bridge lift up so that a boat could go under it, before we could go on our way.
Since we didn’t visit London on our arrival, we did all the tourist things this visit. We visited the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace. We walked everywhere so accidentally got to see some interesting preparation for the changing of the guards as they left their barracks to march to the Palace. We didn’t get very close to the fences since the crowds were too large, but we did have a nice view of the proceedings.
We went to the last minute theatre ticket booths and got tickets to go see Motown and Kinky Boots. Both shows were very entertaining, but we liked Kinky Boots the most. Watching the Drag Queens doing back flips while wearing very high heeled boots was fantastic.
Usual London food, fatty chips, pizza and beers. Didn’t do anything too expensive meal wise.
Rosie also spent a day shopping and demonstrated her love of Bruce by finding him a pub nearby where he could sit and drink while she walked around. Pubs are such great husband minders.
From London we flew back to Bangkok and spent three nights there. Bangkok is a very thriving city but we felt quite safe walking around. We took a ferry ride on the Hilton Ferry, for free, got off at the Hilton and walked straight through the hotel to the outside and looked around this area. On the way back Bruce felt compelled to have a beer at the Hilton before walking back to the ferry jetty to catch the ferry back to our hotel. They gave us a bottle of water and a nice cool towel on the voyage back. What nice people.
On our last day, we again went out to play golf, this time at the Muang Kaew Golf Club, which is very close to Bangkok. We had individual golf carts and caddies again, which Rosie thought was great. She did struggle with the temperature and humidity but all up, we loved the golf in Thailand.
So far in our World Golf Tour, Bruce is winning the stable ford scores, but we are virtually the same in terms of gross score, so there is no clear winner. We will continue this over the next few years since we both enjoyed this experience so much.
One thought on “2017 July Golf Trip to England”
Comments are closed.