The Condottieri
As the renaissence scholars amongst you will know the Condottieri were mercenary soldiers contracted and paid to fight for the Papacy or their Italian City State employers; Florence, Vience etc. Freelance Professional Soldiers.
We encountered exactly that on my last visit to the golf course only he probably replied to an advert for a ‘caretaker’.
I was walking around the golf course with Cosmo, my friend Sue and her dog Maisey talking about presentations for a project we had just finished working on together, when a 4×4 with two blokes in drove across a couple of fairways and rolled up right in front of me.
The driver leaning out of the window explained that we should keep to the foot path. This was because his Doberman Pinschers were roaming around and he didnt want them hurting us, or our dogs. Had we not seen the signs or read the newspaper articles saying this was private land?
Er……no must have missed those. Which path exactley do you mean?
The one which runs across the golf course and under the motorway…..Yes that one there. This is private land and stay on the path as it is dangerous here with my dogs around! In fact I live in what used to be the club house now.
Ok fair enough we wont upset your dogs.
You can walk on that side of the path I dont mind you right over there. Stay away.
We watched them drive off back to the club house and figured that this was about preventing a new Dale Farm Traveller Community from piching up. These guys were ‘looking after the place’ and living on site untill the site was developed. I wondered if he had as many dogs as he had tattoos. If so then that would be a pack of dogs. In my imagination I saw 4×4’s with rocket launchers and machine guns patrolling the golf course like Lybian revolutionary fighters.
The Brook of Plenty
The snow has been and gone and when it had gone I looked in the Brook of Plenty. There was not much water in there, it comes out from the near by woodland, across the fields, over the golf course and into the swamp. If it does reach the sea, it must travel the last half a mile underground.
I want to walk along it in the other direction back towards the woods to see if the source is there. That’s probably across a farm and I dont know if that it is possible. The source of the Brook of Plenty might be in the West Blean Woods?
I’m waiting for the spring now.
This walk is the least stimulating walk I do. I have several walks and the golf course is the most boring.
I never meet anyone……except once I did see a guy with a set of clubs practicing his golf, this was before the snow. I think he was really looking at me hard as I was walking around with a note book and writing in it. He watched me for ages as I approached, he never hit one golf ball, when there was so many miles of space, he just walked around in circles, it took ages for me to walk past from when he first saw me. I said ‘hi’ in a low key way, as you feel you have to, as this is the only human for miles around, like two aeroplanes passing in the middle of the pacific ocean. I can’t even remember if he said hi back? He probably thought I must be recording how many people play golf without paying? As soon as I went past and didnt do anything, write anything about him, or speak to him about what he was doing, he started playing golf again.
I had wondered if he was going to ask me what I was doing? And I had prepared the answer in my head ready in case he did. ‘Drawing a map of the perimeter shape of the golf course’. I was going to say perimiter as a key word as it sounded technical, very unlike my drawings which kept going off the page and I had to carry on using a fresh page, so my visual notes were really bizare and I wondered how hard it would be to join up the information and plot the shape later. I would have even shown him my ‘technical’ drawings if he was interested. I knew he would’nt be though, and if he had looked at my drawings he would have thought I was taking the p**s out of him!
Background
It has been a golf course since 1895, that 116-7 years old!
Outline planning permission seems to granted for a 90 bed hotel, but the rest of the development plans seem less advanced. So it will be interesting too see just how long it is before the plant machinery moves in.
I have walked all the way around the perimeter of it now and made an initial map of the sort of shape and layout of the land.
There is something a little liberating about letting your dog run off all over the putting greens on a golf course! Even though the the golf club has been just been sold.
The land has been sold to a fruit growing company, but the development plans are for a hotel, leisure complex and property developments……no fruit.
Jumped accross the ‘Brook of Plenty’ which runs through here
I found several lost balls
saw a green woodpecker
walked round a marshy bit
and cant wait to watch as nature takes back the land. I tried to use my imagination to see what would happen.
Will I do any gorilla gardening a friend suggested….not me, though others might. I might plant something somewhere?
Moles, I can already see mole hills on the fairways. But it still looks exactly like a golf course apart from one thing……..the flags are gone. I like flags and thought I might design some replacements…..to mark what though?
I haven’t even been over that side yet.
It feels just like being a child finding a piece of waste ground to stake as your own. Cos I’m walking on here its mine!
