North Somerset packs a surprising amount of golfing variety into a small stretch of the South West, and much of it comes with a view. Ten clubs sit between Bristol, Clevedon, Weston-super-Mare and the villages in between, and because so much of this land rises gently from the Bristol Channel, a good number of them look straight out over water towards Wales. The mix is heavily parkland — seven of the ten clubs — with a single links course holding down the coast. It's not a county built around one style of golf, but there's a clear identity: inland courses with big skies and glimpses of the estuary, and one proper seaside test at the end of it.
Bristol itself is the hub, home to Bristol & Clifton, Long Ashton, Mendip Spring, Tickenham and Woodspring. Bristol & Clifton, founded in 1891 and set on undulating parkland, is the most decorated of the group, having hosted both the English Boys Open Amateur Strokeplay Championship and the English Women's Open Stroke Play Championship in recent years; it marked its 125th anniversary in 2016 and still opens its championship course to visitors. Long Ashton, founded two years later in 1893, looks out over the Somerset countryside and counts Chris Wood, the 2016 BMW PGA Champion, among its long-standing members — Tony Jacklin has also played the course. Woodspring Golf & Country Club is the outlier in scale: 27 holes across three separate nine-hole loops (Avon, Brunel and Severn) laid over 235 acres of trees and lakes, designed by Donald Steel, Peter Alliss and Clive Clark, and regularly rated among Bristol's best. Mendip Spring, in the Wrington Vale beneath the Mendip Hills, is a more modern addition from 1992, with sand-based USGA greens and a track record of hosting West Region PGA and Somerset County championships.
Head towards the coast and the golf gets more dramatic. Clevedon Golf Club, founded in 1898, climbs to a par-3 8th tee standing 200 feet above the fairway, with views taking in the Severn Estuary, a castle, the Mendip Hills and, on a clear day, Cardiff Bay — all played out in front of a Grade 2 listed clubhouse that started life as a farmhouse. A few miles on, Worlebury Golf Club sits on a hilltop above Weston-super-Mare, designed by Harry Vardon and perched 200 feet above sea level with views stretching to the Severn Crossing. Tall Pines, over at Blackwell, has grown considerably since 1990, stretching from an original 4,250 yards to more than 6,000 as the course matured, with free-draining parkland turf and its own outlook across the Bristol Channel into Wales.
The county's one true links, and arguably its headline course, is Weston-Super-Mare Golf Club. Founded in 1892 and designed by Alister Mackenzie, it sits on the coast at the southern end of Weston Bay and is one of more than fifty Mackenzie courses in the UK — a genuine link to one of golf's most influential architects, sitting quietly among the parkland majority. It has hosted the Mackenzie Medallion Competition and, fittingly, gone on to win it. For something shorter and more unusual, Tickenham offers nine holes around Cadbury Camp, an ancient hill fort, with USGA-spec greens and a par 3 stretching to 225 yards.
Green fees across the county start from around £16, which makes it an accessible place to sample this range of golf without committing to a single style. A day trip could reasonably take in a Mackenzie links at Weston, a Vardon design on the hill above it, and a Bristol parkland course with championship pedigree — all within a short drive, and most of it with the Channel or the Mendips somewhere in view.