West

Braunton sits on the northern edge of Dartmoor's influence, where Devon's interior gives way to the Atlantic coast and the landscape shifts into something wilder — dunes, estuary mudflats, and the vast sandy expanse of Saunton Sands. If the name "West" and this location point toward Saunton Golf Club's West Course, that is one of England's great links, a companion to the celebrated East Course on the same duneland that many regard as among the finest golf terrain in Britain.

The North Devon coastline here is genuinely remote by English standards. The Taw-Torridge estuary opens to the sea just south of the dunes, and the whole area carries the briny, windswept character you associate with Ireland's links coast more than the softer English countryside inland. Golf played here is at the mercy of Atlantic weather, and local knowledge of wind direction counts for more than raw distance.

If this is indeed Saunton's West Course, it plays through the same dramatic duneland as its more celebrated sibling — slightly less heralded but no less demanding, with fairways that tumble and heave in the way only genuine links ground does.