For this trip, my group of friends took the train to Bournemouth, then walked along the promenade to Sandbanks, caught the chain ferry to Purbeck, following the coastal path via Studland and Swanage to end up at Worth Matravers, where a local folk band were serenading drinkers in a sunny beer garden with views of the sea. There’s something both timeless and old fashioned about the Isle of Purbeck. That was certainly true of the hotel in Studland we stayed in, which boasted among other artefacts, a bust of the children’s writer Enid Blyton.
It turned out Blyton holidayed at the hotel for years, always staying in the same room and eating at the same table in the restaurant. Purbeck in turn became the inspiration for many of her books, from the setting of Famous Five adventures to the real-life PC Plod in the Noddy series. In many ways, the hotel itself hadn’t changed much since Blyton’s days: 70s décor and billiards in the bar, a nine-hole pitch and putt golf course whose fairways had not seen a lawnmower in living memory.
The reception gave us our golf balls with a ‘good luck’ smile. It wasn’t long before we were scouring the gorse bushes to see where they’d gone (an amused deer looking on). Over the course of the round, the golf balls disappeared and a singles match became foursomes to allow us to continue.
But as the round continued, we started to pick up other balls that previous golfers had left behind. By the time we’d finished, we’d lost every ball .