Located in Calne, Wiltshire, about a three hour drive from London!
Bowood is a stay and play hotel and golf course venue, but is also a members club! Members have priority on the course up to 11.00 (at least on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday weekdays)!
I visited as part of a Cherry Lodge GC Pistoleros cost inclusive two round away break, including two nights accommodation, two breakfasts and two evening meals, one on the Sunday day of arrival and then on the second day!
The overall cost was just over £300 per person! We used our deposit for an aborted Turkey trip to finance this UK 'substitute'!
By comparison individual visitor green fees are £85 per round or £300 (£75 each) for a four ball plus the cost of any food and drink!
The Course: is a PGA classified course (and academy)! The course is long, ie approximately 7,300 yards off the white tees and 6,500 off the yellows! By comparison Cherry Lodge is 6,400 and 6,100 respectively!
I/we played off the yellows, I used a buggy as these two rounds were my first of 2022, after a significant layoff!
The course is a conventional par 72, ie 4 par 3s, 10 par 4s and 4 par 5s! It is very undulating, highly bunkered, water on several holes and trees impacting on wayward tee shots! Work was in progress building new tees on some holes and some fairway areas were being returfed! The works didn't affect the enjoyability of the course as they were in areas where the scratch and low single figure players would be using!
There is a reasonable half way refreshments hut!
Conditions were windy during our visit which added significantly to the difficulty!
Many of the greens have severe front, back and side slopes and runoffs which impact holding approaches!
Greens had not recovered from recent maintenance work so were difficult to read line and pace!
All in all this is a lovely challenging course which I would love to play again sooner than later, in good summer conditions now that my game is much improved! However the daily visitor's green fee rate is about £35 too much in my view!
The accomodation was good! However the bar and catering services were a mixture of good quality/options for the breakfast menu whilst the menu options for the evening meals was the same both nights and were uninspired and pretentious!
Finally bar prices are high but more importantly there was no Guinness available in the hotel/restaurant bar in the evenings (though it was available in the course bar whilst it was open)!
Date Monday, 06, June 2022