Illustrated papers unsettle the footman

I SHOULD say offhand that Slieve Donard rises out of the back gardens of several Newcastle citizens. They must find this inconvenient; but the steward of Newcastle Golf Club, viewing the thing from a greater distance, thinks the mountain makes the course.

Certainly, if you are one of those people who play at golf (i.e. not a golfer), Slieve Donard in the background must make all the difference to the round; but I myself (said with rather conscious pride) found greater interest in Newcastle's bunkers. Being one of those slightly frenetic players, I find usually that I have passed over the ordinary hazards when I go off the line; but here there was a good deep pit awaiting me every time.

Golf at Newcastle uniquely might be described as majestic. At the back of one green there is a range of sand dunes at least 40 feet high; and at the 11th, I think it is, the tee shot is over a cliff apparently higher.

It is a course upon which a good deal of money has been spent, is being spent, and most certainly will continue to be spent; for I believe the club enjoys an opulent patronage. The clubhouse itself is a mansion; and the footman who provided me with lunch shook slightly to see that I was reading illustrated papers as I ate.

On this particular morning, however, there were very few people out and about. The professional and I began our match at 9 a.m.; and let it be credited to us for ever that, while the world still was almost dark, both of us hit from the first tee what are known as "mazzlers". I topped the next; but that matters less than nothing.

Like Portmarnock, Newcastle is a course upon which it is essential to hit the drive; for each hole has been planned so that an easy approach only is possible from a small square of turf on each fair way. Most of all I admired the three long one shotters, the best kind of hole in golf, and particularly what I have calculated to be the 16th. Between tee and green there is a deep valley, and, if the wind was against you much, the fairest thing to do would be to call it a half on the tee.

In the professional's shop I found you could buy anything you liked connected with golf, from shoes, through trousers to umbrellas. Newcastle, indeed, is a little overwhelming to all but the most arrogant; but, if your nerve will stand the strain of asking if you might play a few holes - and there is every reason why it should - you will be repaid for your self confidence.

In blazing sunshine, I started in leisurely fashion for Royal Belfast, now and then giving the fire engine her head, just to show I was all right after lunch. (The fire engine, as a matter of fact, must have had many qualms about the hospitality showered upon her cargo.) At 2 p.m. I arrived on the outskirts of Belfast, just in nice time to get out to Craigavad by half past. Knowingly, I turned off towards Newtownards. You weren't going to catch me with my elaborate itinerary messing about in the crowded streets of the city.

For a long time I drove fast and confidently through rich suburban avenues, and then gradually the old familiar doubts began to manifest themselves. Might it be that I had taken something of a wrong turning somewhere? As I turned, wholly reluctantly, into the grounds of Stormont, I knew I had; for Stormont must have been miles away from my direct road. I am glad, however, that chance had brought me to the Northern Parliament, for it is something of a sight.

Two long, straight, pink roads lead up a steep hill to Stormont; each of them must be very nearly a mile and a half in length. Ornamental and Oriental lamps are posted every few yards. Then at the junction of the pink roads is the edifice, and edifice is the only word to describe that blindingly white, colonnaded, beflagged building. I found it difficult to imagine that the thing ever could be inhabited. It looked as cold, artificial, and impersonal as some of the empty palaces you see in foreign cities.

I sped down the hill again with a sensation almost of panic. More slowly now I drove round a bit more, and then I saw an AA scout. I said boldly: "Straight on for Craigavad?" He cannot have spoken for a full 30 seconds. "Craigavad?" he asked in wonder; and, a man trained from birth to deal with morons, taught at enormous expense to put strayed motorists right in a moment, it took him 15 minutes to work out a scheme which might, or might not, be practicable for getting me to Craigavad. Even then we agreed that he had made a fine job of it.

I arrived at Royal Belfast half an hour late - and found the professional ready to receive me with the heartiest of welcomes. He said he was ready to start any time I liked, and then explained he was afflicted with a pain in his neck, and this was his first day out for weeks. Rather unhappily, I suggested that we should call off our match. He would have nothing of it, however, and we began.

He delved a bit at the first two, and I became more and more unhappy, and then he hit a brassie shot about 700 yards out of a divot mark. Eventually he completed the course in 74 strokes with the stiffest neck I have ever seen. Furtively I tried imitating the method he had devised for himself. It was not a success.

Royal Belfast, probably, is the finest inland golf course in Ireland. Velvety greens, close clipped fairways, and plenty of distance to every hole. A lot of people say that there is no comparison between inland and seaside courses; but Craigavad, with its treelined, bright green fairways, I found infinitely attractive.

Like Newcastle, however, I shouldn't imagine that you and a couple of the lads could fool round the course with a putter in the long evenings, with a caravan of caddies bringing up supplies. It is country club golf, and even the fire engine looked a little dingy beside the shining machines surrounding her. I left for Belfast feeling unreasonably that I was wearing a white tie with a black waistcoat.

From Craigavad to the city is one of the fastest main roads I travelled on in Ireland, and at about the half way mark I passed one of the new 100 mile an hour Bentleys. It was being driven rapidly and skilfully by a young man in a check cap and camel hair overcoat, but the fire engine swept past him with a roar. If he had been going in the same direction as ourselves we might have given him quite a race.

Then into Belfast, and many miserable minutes jolting along on those terrible cobble stones, which seem to spread over the major portion of the city. I was bound for the Midland Hotel, and over whelmed by the double decker buses, the traffic lights and the armed police, I crept along close to the kerb, thinking nervously of speed limits, beacons and pedestrian crossings, and the other impedimenta which afflict the British motorist.

I had been in the hotel 20 minutes when I learnt I was in the front line. York Street spread before me. I went out to look for bloodstains, preferably a few days old; and made the surprising discovery that barricades had been erected down all the side streets. They were made of corrugated iron, at least seven feet high, and their purpose, as I learnt, was "to separate the factions." Apparently the factions are so sharply divided that a barricade across the middle of a street does not leave a sheep and a goat on the same side.

Early in the morning I left for Portrush, rejoicing very, very secretly that by evening I should be back across the border into Saorstat Eireann.