Darwen

Darwen Golf Club sits on the moors above the town of the same name in Lancashire's Pennine foothills, and the elevation tells you everything about what's waiting. This is upland golf in the truest northern English sense — exposed, honest, and at the mercy of whatever weather rolls in off the high ground. The views stretch across the surrounding hills on a clear day, but the wind can make a straightforward layout feel like a serious examination in a matter of minutes.

Lancashire has a rich and underappreciated golf tradition, and moorland clubs like Darwen represent its backbone — member-owned, community-rooted, and refreshingly unaffected. The course will have evolved organically over the decades, as most clubs of this vintage have, shaped more by the contours of the land than by any grand design philosophy.

With par set at 71, there's likely an asymmetry in the par-3 and par-5 count that rewards ball-strikers who keep the ball low and think their way around rather than overpowering it. Good moorland golf, in other words.