Chronicles of the Berkshire Pig: Battle of Hastings

World Crazy Golf Championships, Hastings

For once there was no engineering work on the way to Pad, so it was an 0915 HST off Swindon up to town. Access to the Bakerloo line is currently blocked, so as I had time, I headed round on the Circle Line to Victoria…

……where thankfully the International Cheese Centre was open.

It was then the 1102 Ramsgate service across a murky Thames....

….and into Orpington.

Here the station staff had some fun announcing three different platforms for our train before it finally arrived.

South Eastern Trains have the least worthwhile First Class imaginable, being exactly the same seating as elsewhere, just with a headrest cover.

The line to Hastings takes in Tonbridge, which is home to the rail engineering yard for the South East, and Europe's largest rail crane as just arriving home after a night out swapping over paintwork somewhere around London Bridge.

I was now enjoying my cheese purchases; ham and brie, ad Stilton said rolls, mini saucisson sticks and six mini cheeses (epoisse, tintern, an unarmed but pungent washed rind, innkeepers cheddar, Lincolnshire Poacher and a Swiss hard cheese).

Just before Hastings is Battle, the conveniently named place where the ructions actually took place in 1066.

Shortly we were in Hastings.....

.....with its boat on the beach entrance feature. More about that later.

My destination was down at the sea front….

…..for these.

World Crazy Golf Championships, Hastings

The seafront course has been in existence since 1973 and has Arnold Palmer accreditation. It has hosted the World Championships since 2003.

Crazy Golf seems to have a different name in every country it is played, mainly through course builders trying to get a name trademarked. Across Europe, it is more widely known as mini golf, which was a Scandinavian trademark hat has now lapsed. In America, the biggest brand is Putt-Putt.

The sports origins are in North America in the early 20th century. The skyscraper boom of the 1920s saw a mini golf course as the ideal roof top past time. Interestingly, much of the games early expansion was financed by Al Capone as he saw it as an easy way to get into legitimate business and soon his revenue from it far outweighed that of bootlegging and extortion. However, the depression of the 1930s saw the game almost disappear in the States.

In Europe, the success of the game in the States had spread to the UK, Germany and Sweden by the 1920s. The boom was nowhere near that of across the pond, and courses were usually in municipal parks, so mostly survived the wars.

Post war, the American game has been promoted by a small number of course builders. In Europe, it continues to be a council led initiative normally running the curses as concessions.

Although there are a number of dedicated players, there are no full time mini golf players. In Britain, the constraint is that no foundation funding can be sought as there is a ruling that derivatives of other sports do not get funded, and it is seen as an off shoot of normal golf.

The complex is split into the traditional 18 hole Arnold Palmer course, and the Pirate adventure course.

The contest consists of six rounds of the Arnold Palmer course over a day and a half, before a play off of the top players. The par score is 36, 2 shots per hole for the Johnny Balls out there

There is a competition supplied ball....

....whilst the serious players have a putter with a sucker at the top of the grip to retrieve the ball from the hole.

The competitors are mix of those that have never played.....

....to those that bring their own squeegee.

So to the course

Hole 1 - A gradual introduction, nice and straight with only a couple of offset bunkers as obstacles.

Hole 2 - A ramp with only a small margin of error to get through the central gap, needs to be timed right to drop down into the hole. Forget the option of going round the ramp, this is big boys shit.

Hole 3 - First of the angles as a central wooden block prevents a straight path down the centre.

Hole 4 - A gimme for the pro with an easy central pass, only surrounding bunkers trouble the novices.

Hole 5 - The stereotypical windmill hole. The spinning sales have to be avoided to hit right down the centre, underneath the windmill, to the hole on the other side.

Hole 6 - Another fairly simple straight shot for the expert, this time some raised tumuli are present to thwart the novice.

Hole 7 - Another ramp, but at the crest, a concrete V takes the ball either dead centre and down into the hole, or else out into the rough.

Hole 8 - Another novelty hole as this time a rotating paddle wheel must be carefully timed, though it is still a straight put.

Hole 9 - A rising crest halfway down the track, but another straight putt.

Hole 10 - The angles are back in play with a curved dog league which throw out the normal trigonometry.

Hole 11 - An unspecified obelisk blocks the eyeliner, but a straight shot beneath gives a clear run through to the hole.

Hole 12 - A rather uneventful return to the mid fairway crescent.

Hole 13 - A kinked hole, but cut off the dog leg and there is a straight putt to the hole.

Hole 14 - The trickiest hole so far, some say on the whole course. A double set of crescents before the hole, located on a plateau. Perfect weight as well as direction is required.

Hole 15 - The first downward drop of the course, and quite fierce it is too, through a set of bunkers.

Hole 16 - A very short drop onto very short green.

Hole 17 - A straight but narrow hit under a lighthouse, finding the hole in the middle of four raised humps.

Hole 18 - The final hole is a bit of an anti-climax. A dog leg with a raised spiral at the apex, required for the hole in one, but a safe 32 if you play around it.

Anyway, you can have too much of a good thing, and if seeing IT support workers called Steve, in full Crystal Palace shell suits, giving mini fist pumps like a Primark Henaman, because they have got a hole in one, really is a good thing.

The pier looked as enticing as the one off Big.

So I headed for one of the cliff railways.

This is the West Hill lift….

….which gives a 150m run up through the hill, to the castle site.

At the top, their is a view of the golf complex....

....the other cliff railway..

....and the Stade, which is home to Europe's largest fleet of beach launched fishing boats.

With time passing, I headed back down the railway.

The Golf was in the break between the qualifying rounds and the final play off. In the end it was won by reigning champion Michael Smith, local Sean Homer came second with Mark Wood third having won a play off against Germanys' Thomas Giebenhein.