Waterbeach

Cambridgeshire sits on some of the flattest agricultural land in England, and the village of Waterbeach — a few miles north of Cambridge along the Ely road — is squarely in that fenland tradition. The landscape here is wide, open, and exposed, shaped more by drainage channels and big skies than by any natural topography. Golf in this part of the world has to work with the land it gets, and courses in the fens tend to reward accuracy and course management over power, because the wind off the flat fields can shift a shot considerably more than any slope would.

Waterbeach itself is a modest community with a long history, including a former RAF and army base that defined much of its 20th-century character. An 18-hole layout here would almost certainly reflect that unpretentious, everyday spirit — the kind of club where local members play through the seasons regardless of what the weather decides to do, which in Cambridgeshire can mean anything.

For visitors coming off the back of a day in Cambridge — the colleges, the punts, the Backs — a round at a local course like this offers a genuinely different side of the county: agricultural, unhurried, and quietly its own thing.