There are golf courses where you feel close to nature. And then there’s Bamburgh Castle, where you feel like nature might actually be trying to kill you. Clinging to the Northumberland coast like a windswept miracle, Bamburgh is where golf meets Game of Thrones, and the views are so spectacular they should really come with a sedative.

From the first tee, the tone is set. You look out across castles, islands, the endless grey ribbon of the North Sea — and immediately realise you’ve brought the wrong jacket, the wrong ball flight, and possibly the wrong sport. The wind is not a feature here. It is a character. A vengeful, theatrical diva who enters stage left and immediately takes a six-stroke lead.

The course itself is a gloriously unpredictable rollercoaster of blind tee shots, tiny plateau greens, and fairways that slope like a GCSE maths problem. You’ll hit shots that soar into postcard-perfect backdrops and shots that vanish, irretrievably, into whin bushes as old as feudalism.

And yet… it’s completely intoxicating. You’re laughing by the 4th, whimpering by the 8th, and swearing eternal devotion to it by the 12th, where you play downhill with the sea stretched out like a Turner painting, and Holy Island twinkling on the horizon like golf’s idea of salvation.

There are no airs and graces. The welcome is warm, the clubhouse practical, and the halfway hut may be your last hope of survival. No one’s Instagramming their lobster ravioli here. They’re eating a ham roll with both hands while watching their trolley somersault into a dyke.

But the magic of Bamburgh is this: you don’t care about your score. You stop caring whether that was a double or a triple. You start caring about whether you remembered to look up. Because every hole — every step — delivers a new gasp of scenery, a new “you’ve got to be joking” moment, and a new reason to believe that golf is utterly mad and utterly marvellous.

Bamburgh Castle isn’t just a course. It’s an experience. A pilgrimage. The kind of place you play once and immediately plan to play again — ideally with fewer clubs and more base layers.

Just bring a camera. And a sense of humour. And possibly a flare gun.