CONTENTS

1Pat on the Back

2A Rusty Start

3Fireworks of the North West

4You Better, You Better, You Bet

5Monkeys, Snails and Other Duds

6Bottoms Up

7Journey’s End

Epilogue

Orange wellington boots. Not the obvious choice of footwear on a golf course, but I was only eight years old and Barley Cove’s nine-hole course was a minefield of cowpats. It was fortunate that my fashion imperatives and practical sensibilities combined so seamlessly. Over the years I have committed many crimes against fashion, but in those boots I rocked.

I had been playing golf for a few years, taught by my father and grandfather. Their hallowed golfing ground was Greystones Golf Club, but it wasn’t somewhere an eight-year-old boy could get to easily. Barley Cove in County Cork, however, was a regular family summer destination and it had a links golf course right on the doorstep. On these summer holidays we would hire a chalet overlooking the beach and holes that stretched across the dunes. Most days I played it twice, getting up at the crack of dawn and sneaking out. On the first occasions when I disappeared into that early morning mist, my mother arose to find her son gone, probably kidnapped. My dad was booted out of bed to find me. And when he did, somehow he’d managed to bring his clubs too.

Every morning, at that ridiculous hour, I would head off in my wellies with Granddad’s cut-down clubs, some old balls and the wild seaside air in my soul. The course was about as natural a creation as you could find. Fairways ran an obvious route between distinct dunes, with a tee at one end and a green at the other. It really was as simple as that. Barley Cove was crammed with the usual links hazards but the cowpats were extra special. Cows have little understanding of golf etiquette. Fairways, rough, tee boxes – wherever a golf ball could go, you could be sure that a cow had already left its calling card. Except the greens. A holiday course it might have been, but even here the greens were sacred. They were enclosed by electric wire fencing and the cows never went near them. The wire ran all the way around the green at a height of about two feet. There was a gate that golfers would open and close, but sometimes when you were on the opposite side of the green you simply stepped over it. Two feet. It doesn’t sound very high but for an eight-year-old boy, whose crotch happened to be at the exact same height as the electric wire, it was a severe obstacle.

I have always been told that you learn from your mistakes. The mistake I made that day, as my most sensitive parts made contact with a current strong enough to repel a 1,000-lb animal, has left me with a deep appreciation of the power and pain of electricity.

In 1998, married and in my thirties, I returned from eight years in London, and finally got back to golf. I played occasionally in the UK but it is almost impossible to get a regular game unless you are a member somewhere.

I fell in love with the game again and wanted to play as many courses as possible. Naturally, the big-name courses held most appeal but playing all of them was an unrealistic dream.

‘Has anyone heard of Newcastle West?’ Ronan asked as we sat in the Greystones clubhouse one day.

Three of us shook our heads, so the following Monday I went to Dublin’s Hodges Figgis bookshop and searched in the sports section for Newcastle West. There was next to nothing. The only reference I found was to a ‘pleasant parkland with big trees’. Greystones Golf Club was similarly dismissed with a one-line description.

That was wrong.

I started to have ideas for a golf book of my own – a book that would review every Irish eighteen-hole golf course equally, from an amateur’s perspective. It wouldn’t dwell on history or the designer; it wouldn’t pander to a course because of its reputation; and it would be about the golf experience, pure and simple.

The question was, how could I play every course without losing my house and, quite possibly, my wife? I mapped out potential routes and calculated how many golf clubs I’d have to visit. The number started at 326 (the official Golfing Union of Ireland figure), but I found another 23 along the way – some as I was passing the gates.

There was also the matter of how much this was going to cost. If I stayed at B&Bs or hotels and ate out in clubhouses every day, it was going to cost in the region of €15,000. It was not a figure I could justify and reality stamped on my enthusiasm.

‘Get a camper van,’ my wife suggested. ‘You can always sell it afterwards.’

I returned to the maps, back on plan. Now I had to figure out how best to approach golf clubs to ask them if I could play their course. The main goal was not to pay a green fee. Yes, I know this sounds cheap, but consider the alternative: if you work on an average green fee of €50, multiply that by 349, you end up with over €17,000. I decided the easiest thing to do would be to seek the advice of Royal County Down, a world-famous club with two links courses. I phoned up and asked what I should do. The voice at the other end of the phone said, ‘You’ll need to contact either the Northern Irish Tourist Board or Tourism Ireland and ask them to write to us on your behalf, requesting a round of golf and when you would like to play. We will contact them with our response and they will then contact you. In order to acknowledge our generosity you must bring your first born to be sacrificed to the golfing gods of the north.’

I asked the obvious question: ‘Is this to play both courses or just the Championship one?’

Some courses were always going to be difficult to access: I had already played Royal County Down, Royal Portrush and The K Club, but I expected Old Head, Ballybunion, Lahinch, Doonbeg and Portmarnock to be problematic. As it turned out, only one of these proved awkward. In general, getting to play Ireland’s courses was an easy exercise. Perhaps that reflects the generous nature of Irish people and the way that fellow golfers are embraced on this island. I made a phone call, explained what I was doing and the manager, secretary, or professional went out of their way to accommodate me. A few requested an email to clarify things, but I was keeping a blog and I had a publisher behind me, which was usually more than enough to satisfy anyone who reckoned I was pulling a fast one. And those who still thought I was after a freebie only had to look at my camper van to realise that if that was the case, I was one sad and lonely individual.

With the camper van confirmed as my preferred mode of transport, I set about buying one. It was something I knew nothing about. A friend of the family offered to help, so I listed out my requirements and budget. A jack-of-all-trades, he had fingers in plenty of pies and eventually said he’d found the perfect vehicle in Athlone. A week or so later he turns up in this 1989 Hymer. It was big, wide and top heavy. I was assured the engine was running fine and that everything was in working order. He showed me how to use the old-style gear stick, the fridge, the water system, the gas hob, the toilet, the shower, the gas tank … the list went on, but as soon as he showed me I promptly forgot.

It was also left-hand drive.

Unfortunately, not everything worked quite as efficiently as I had been led to believe.

I had problems with my gas. The heater and hob worked fine, but the gas-powered refrigerator was a different story. It was the most complex piece of equipment I had ever encountered. True, there were only two controls, one of which was an on/off switch, but the temperature dial had to be pressed in and turned until the flame caught – a sound so faint you’d have had a better chance hearing a fart in a storm. When travelling it was recommended that I turn the gas off, which meant that I had to turn it back on when parked. This was an operation that saw me down on my knees every night, ear pressed against the fridge door as I turned the dial one millimetre at a time. It could take seconds or minutes depending on what was going on in the outside world. Either way, the job was only half done because I then had to select the temperature. It appeared there were only two settings on the dial: ‘warm’ and ‘frozen’. I lost count of the number of times I had to throw out curdled milk. I also lost count of the number of times I ended up with a frozen milk carton. I never did get it right and, after a couple of months, gave up trying.

The gas aside, the water supply, which came from a large container under one of the seats, also had to be figured out. It was rigged to supply the loo, shower and kitchen sink, although not in that order, I hasten to add. There was little to no pressure and the shower had barely enough power to wash a small rodent. By the time the hot water had come out of the showerhead and reached the tray it was cold. I ended up using the space for storage. I never regretted my decision, apart from the time at Greenore Golf Club, when I stepped out of their shower and gave the lady cleaner a bigger surprise than she might have expected at that hour of the morning.

The problem, however, was the water-pressure system itself. If I wanted water from the kitchen tap, I could get it only by going into the bathroom and turning on the tap in the sink first. I had to leave it running while I used the kitchen tap and then turn it off afterwards. And hot water was an impossibility.

I didn’t see why I should keep all of these idiosyncrasies to myself. ‘Come for a ride,’ I said to my wife one day. ‘I need to fill up with diesel.’

She came. She saw. She never stepped foot in it again, which was only mildly ironic since it had been her idea. There went my plans for cheap future holidays.

In fairness, I understood why. Being a man, I’m not exactly fastidious when it comes to cleanliness and I hadn’t done any tidying in the camper van. My wife had been reluctant to touch anything.

The wall-to-wall shagpile carpet was an unexpected flourish. At the start, I thought it was grey, but underneath the filth it was red. It was the bright orange and brown multi-patterned curtains, however, that made me nauseous. I went on a 1970s’ acid trip every time I closed them. I’m not sure what it all said about the previous owner, but I doubt he had to do drugs when he just had to look at the fabric. Or sniff it for that matter.

It was a strange feeling having your bedroom, dining room, kitchen, sitting room and bathroom in one tiny space. You couldn’t swing a cat in it, yet alone a 9 iron. And this was a four-person camper van, supposedly. If one other person had been in there for a week I would have killed him. Or her. So it was just as well that my wife had been so dismissive.

The bed was a pull-down double. It hugged the ceiling above the driver’s and passenger’s seats, and then pulled down about three feet when it was required. You had to clamber up and down a bit, balancing on one of the sofas (where, incidentally, someone’s head would be if there were four people on board).

Over the course of my journeys I grew to love the old banger. It was a temperamental piece of junk, but it had a certain je ne sais quoi. To drive it was to drive a boat. It rocked from side to side, leaned into corners like a comb-over on a windy day and didn’t much like the idea of braking. In terms of speed … not a lot.

The biggest challenge in my new mode of transport was the Irish roads. The joy of our roads can only be appreciated if you have had the pleasure of experiencing them first-hand. To try to describe them to the uninitiated would be to do them a severe injustice. Country roads can be like an airplane during violent turbulence … no two parts of your body go in the same direction. Oh sure, the county council lads come out and fill in the potholes, but it’s like putting a plaster on a gaping wound. No sooner have they poured in the tar and the gravel than the rain comes and washes it all out again. Still, it keeps them in employment, I suppose. They can come back to the same spot and do exactly the same thing up to three or four times a year. Even Pavlov’s dogs would have realised that this was a pointless battle, but the councils insist on banging away with the same tired methods. Of course, that assumes you’re lucky enough to live in a county where the potholes get filled in. A man by the name of Martin Hannigan, in County Cavan, took huge exception to the lack of council efforts to fill in potholes, and started driving around the county painting yellow circles around offending craters. His mission was ended in 2009, when a judge told him to desist or face jail. The man should have been given a medal or, at the very least, a shovel and some tar. No one seemed to spot the irony that, at the end of one of the worst roads in the county, there was a new roundabout bedecked with freshly planted flowerbeds and young, staked trees.

The problem in the camper van, given its size, was that a pothole sent the vehicle into a sort of freeze-frame orbit. Anything that wasn’t tied down ended up floating in space until touchdown, at which point everything crashed to the floor, usually a long way from where it started. My quest may have focused on Irish golf, but I drove around enough of Ireland to know that I could have written an opus on Irish roads as well.

The other challenge was drivers on the road. No one wants to get stuck behind a lumbering, fat beast of a camper van but how drivers dealt with my presence demonstrated a dangerously devil-may-care approach.

One of my best friends, a sales rep at the time, once told me that the worst drivers in Ireland were from Tipperary South.

‘And the second worst?’ I asked.

‘Tipperary North.’

Perhaps a bit harsh, but I encountered some nutters on my travels, many of them young men who felt that being in what amounts to a small tin can meant they could not be harmed. Overtaking on corners, ignoring traffic lights, and this crazy assumption that drivers coming in the opposite direction would automatically move onto the hard shoulder if they started to overtake. My camper never went much above 90 km/h and I could see these guys going mental if I was a fraction under the speed limit. They would weave from side to side, head pressed against the glass or out the window to see past my ample rear. Then, inexplicably, they would make their move. I’d watch in horror as a Jenson Button-wannabe roared past, scattering the oncoming traffic like a dog chasing seagulls on the beach … except a dog has more intelligence.

When I passed through Charleville on my initial golfing foray into Cork, I spotted a car parked by the side of the road. You couldn’t miss it. The car vibrated and twitched to the booming music that was trying to escape through heavily tinted windows. It was white, with fancy headlights, funky alloys and a spoiler that screamed ‘have I got a hot rod in my pants or am I just pleased to see you?’ This wasn’t the first such vehicle I had encountered – boy racers are not limited to specific Irish counties: they’re equally as macho and stupid wherever you go – but it was the first disco-in-a-car I had come across. Under the chassis, lights flashed in time to the music. Everyone who walked past the car stared at it in disbelief and then moved on, glancing back over their shoulder to check if it was real. And all that time the little boys inside would be revelling in how hard and cool they were. It would work too, once their balls dropped.

I’ve always been amused by boy (and girl) racers. I guess they start with a budget and then sit around identifying all those crucial ‘boy racer’ essentials: 18-inch alloys and extra-wide wheels – check; tinted windows – check; spoiler – check; super-fat exhaust – check; bucket seats, 7,000 megawatt stereo, furry dice – check … and after they’ve budgeted for all of these items they suddenly realise they have all the cool stuff but no car. With only €250 left, off they go and create their super-charged, extra-funky, 10,000-brake horsepower Nissan Micra. Yeah man, that’s cool.

I thought about adding some furry dice to the camper van, but gave up on the idea. Besides, I had James Last to listen to and nothing’s cooler than that!

‘Where will you be on Judgement Day?’

The question caught me off guard. I glanced across at the young woman in the passenger seat. Dark brown hair framed her face and rested on her shoulders. She was attractive, lithe and in her thirties. She was also serious. I wanted to point out that this was my camper van, so my rules, which meant no religious stuff before 9 a.m. I became acutely aware that her husband was sitting somewhere behind me, out of sight.

It was my first trip, going through Waterford, Tipperary and Cork, and I’d been apprehensive when I left home at 6 a.m. I’d planned thoroughly, but something about taking that first big step jangled my nerves. Less than an hour later I’d seen this couple hitching outside New Ross. I decided to do the Christian thing and, with luck, calm my nerves at the same time. Brenda was Australian, John was British, and they’d been married for five years. After a bit of chit-chat about my travels in Oz and their travels here, Brenda launched into stories about their holiday in China. That’s when the hairs on the back of my neck started to rise.

‘Then John broke his leg,’ she said in a hushed tone.

‘Sorry to hear that,’ I said, searching in the rear view mirror for the elusive John. ‘How did that happen?’

‘He fell,’ she said sharply as if it was obvious, or irrelevant, or both. ‘But the villagers who rescued us cured him. Within two weeks he could walk over red hot coals.’

I laughed, assuming it was a laughing moment. It wasn’t.

‘It was a miracle.’ Brenda’s voice had become evangelical and I still hadn’t found John in the mirror. I wanted to know why a man who had broken his leg would then choose to walk over hot coals. Was it verrucas?

As I watched the roadside fly by, all hedgerows and soft green fields, I wondered how I had managed to pick up a couple of crazies on my first trip. The camper van was left-hand drive so those grassy fields were within reach … if I timed the jump just right.

‘Where will you be on Judgement Day?’ she repeated, clearly annoyed that I had drifted off at this critical juncture.

‘I hadn’t given it much thought,’ I capitulated, having decided that ‘Watching EastEnders’ was not a prudent response. For all I knew, they were Coronation Street fans.

She drew herself up and stared with steely green eyes that threatened to pop out of her head. ‘I,’ she proclaimed, ‘will be sitting at God’s right hand.’

Phew, I thought, definitely Corrie fans.

‘And I will be judging you.’

My, someone had a mighty high opinion of herself.

Of course, Brenda and John weren’t crazy. They were born-again Christians. Their Chinese experiences had converted them from normal people into raving loonies. For the next forty-five minutes I heard how I too could be saved if I allowed myself to be born again.

I wondered fleetingly if they should be thrown from the moving vehicle rather than myself. Would they be born again if they hit the ground at 80 kilometres an hour?

I crossed the wide swathe of the River Suir and entered Waterford city, desperate to be rid of my passengers. As they alighted, John followed meekly behind his wife. He hadn’t said a word since Brenda’s ravings began. I had no idea what he had been doing behind me. Performing some religious ceremony perhaps, or maybe he was secretly delighted that the fervour of Brenda’s devotion had been directed at someone else for a while. She was still pleading with me to join them on their journey as I drowned them in a cloud of camper-van exhaust.

A short time later I crossed more water, the Kings Channel, on the ferry that serves the Waterford Castle Golf Club. It covers an island that is the exclusive domain of the golf club and the Waterford Castle Hotel alongside. I was standing on the 1st tee in sunshine, the dew shimmering on the fairway which stretched towards the distant waters. This was the first hole on the first course of my golfing quest. I tried to get excited, to tell myself that this was the start of something special, something I had been dreaming about for years. But Brenda’s religious fervour had messed me up. I pretended it was her head I was teeing up, but as I started my downswing out popped a pair of demented eyes.

My duffed drive didn’t even reach the ladies’ tee box.

‘Bollocks.’

I rattled around Waterford city’s golf courses, before arriving late at Dunmore East. It’s a small fishing village and the chipper was doing a roaring trade as I drove past. It started to rain as I headed up the hill, the harbour to my right. Golf. Rain. Two words that most Irish golfers tie into a sentence one week after another. In the clubhouse I ordered some grub and a pint and sat by the window enjoying the sound of the rain against the glass. As I was to discover in many clubhouses, when you pull out a laptop people are drawn to you like a magnet, which is how I spent my first evening in the company of Mick and Dermot. Mick was a big man with a smile that rippled from ear to ear. He was a summer visitor from Dublin and played regularly at Dunmore East, when the family came down. Dermot seemed content to watch proceedings with his pint hovering inches from his mouth, always looking like he was about to say something but never quite getting there. After I’d explained what I was doing I fielded the questions that became part and parcel of many clubhouse nights and rounds of golf.

‘What’s your favourite course? How did you manage to get a job like this? Has your wife divorced you yet?’

As my dinner arrived, the lads excused themselves, leaving me to write up my reviews before heading back for my first night’s sleep.

You know that sound that infiltrates your dreams? The one that stays out of reach but keeps nipping at you until eventually it drags you out of your slumber? I opened my eyes in the dark and listened. It sounded like dripping … and it was coming from inside the camper van.

I sat bolt upright.

I discovered two things that night: the first was that I slept exceptionally well in a camper van; the second was that the ceiling was only a foot above my head.

My head ricocheted off the roof with a resounding crack that suggested I’d either broken the ceiling or split my forehead. With my brain screaming and my mouth uttering obscenities, I switched on the light and searched for blood. The hole in the ceiling suggested I’d won that particular battle, but the angry bruise across my forehead darkened and spread for the next fortnight.

The rain and the dripping lasted till morning and the bowl placed underneath the leak only served to magnify the sound. Worse was to come as I discovered over the coming days that the rain would form a mini lake between the ceiling and roof. It happily sloshed around as I drove, mimicking the sound of the ocean washing over pebbles on the beach … very calming when you buy it on a CD but cause for concern when it flows overhead, about to leak through in an alarming number of places. I learned that I had to park at a particular angle if the leak was to be in the centre of the camper van, where I could lay out an assortment of bowls and containers to catch the water. I also learned that after a week of sunshine not all the water had gone. It had simply been hiding. At least the area above my bed stayed dry.

From Tramore to Dungarvan I followed a stretch of coastline known as the Copper Coast, for its copper mining heritage. It led me on to Youghal, the most easterly town in County Cork, where I encountered a bunch of Ladybirds on the back nine of Youghal Golf Club. Not wildlife but enthusiastic lady golfers who played every Monday, staying close to the clubhouse. I had interrupted their normal order of play, and while the first two groups happily invited me to play through, the third group, a two-ball, had other ideas.

‘You can play through if you want, or you can join us.’

It was the 16th hole, a par three that stared out at Cabin Point across the Blackwater Estuary. The town of Youghal lay below, almost in hiding which seemed apt given the town’s recent troubles. Once renowned for its manufacturing and carpet making, the town faded somewhat as its large factories closed over the past decade. It left a scar of unemployment and Youghal has endured the emigration of young people at a faster rate than elsewhere.

I joined the ladies, and Moira and Juliet let me tee off first before moving to their tee. Moira was a small, older lady who moved slowly and deliberately. Her silver hair flipped back and forth in the wind and she took what looked like an uncomfortable swing at the ball. It flew a little and then bounded straight down the hill towards the green.

‘It’s my hips,’ she said by way of an apology. ‘I’ve just had them replaced and this is my first game back. I’m a bit slow.’

Juliet’s drive followed Moira’s and we parted ways as I headed right to look for my errant ball. I glanced back to see how Moira was doing. I thought of my gran. There was something about her size, her hair, the way she moved that reminded me of my father’s mum. And my gran played golf too.

We met on the green and Moira rolled in a 20-foot putt for par. The smile on her face lit up the course. She walked over to me, stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on my cheek.

‘Thank you,’ she said, grinning at my embarrassment. ‘That’s only my third par ever.’

Moira’s par and my use as a good luck charm were recounted in detail back in the clubhouse when the twelve Ladybirds swarmed around me.

‘Where are you playing next?’ Mary asked after my lunch arrived.

‘East Cork,’ I replied.

‘Are you playing Water Rock?’ She leaned over and stole a chip.

‘Never heard of it. Does it have eighteen holes?’

‘Oh yes. It’s a family run place. Pay and play, you know. Very nice too.’ The other ladies agreed. They told me how to find it and we chatted for a bit longer before they trooped off en masse.

I was enjoying the quiet clubhouse atmosphere when a voice in my ear made me jump.

‘How did you stand it?’ asked the voice.

‘Stand what?’ I replied, turning to find an elderly man stooping over me.

‘Playing with women,’ he said sharply. His face was flushed as red as his jumper.

‘I’ve no problems playing with women,’ I replied. ‘Do you?’

He growled at me. ‘Can’t play golf so what’s the point? Hold everybody up, don’t they!’

An old friend of mine would disagree. Playing off 8, hitting the ball long and dead straight, Clare would beat most men I know. If you can swing a club, hit a ball and you want to play golf then you’re as entitled to step on to a golf course as anyone else … and I’m happy to play with you. I played with a wide and entertaining group of golfers on my travels; fortunately this old fart wasn’t one of them.

‘Oh, I see. And I take it you’ve never held anybody up?’

‘Humph.’ He glared at me when he realised he wasn’t going to get the reaction he wanted. I took that as my cue to leave.

The N25 road led me to Cork, Ireland’s second city. There are twelve courses to choose from, both within the city and around the periphery, but there was one on this trip that particularly fascinated me. Blarney Golf Resort had opened only recently and it was designed by John ‘Grip it and rip it’ Daly (along with the considerable expertise of Irish golf architect Mel Flanagan). The resort came with a hotel, a spa and the ubiquitous rows of houses that gather around the hotel and clubhouse like the drool on a greedy property developer’s gob.

Blarney is, of course, famous for something else: the beloved tradition of kissing the Blarney Stone. Tourists get fleeced for a few quid to be hung upside down so that they can kiss a piece of stone set in the walls of Blarney Castle. I take my hat off to the fella who had that idea. Does he get royalties? The stone was fitted into the castle’s walls in the fifteenth century and has been busily kissed by thousands, if not millions, of people since then.

On my way through Blarney town I dropped off a load of my clothes at a laundrette. As I handed over the bag I was told to come back later the next day. Playing ten rounds of golf a week required certain things to be done: one was keeping the camper van from smelling like a fish factory, which meant clothes being cleaned; the other was trying to stay healthy.

I’m not exactly the fittest or most flexible golfer ever invented, so I had decided early on that to reduce the risk of injury, I would have a massage once a week. It would keep the stiffness out of my back, neck and shoulders – three areas that can ruin a golfer’s game.

After a sun-kissed round at Blarney Golf Club, I headed for the hotel. Perhaps the words ‘Beauty Spa’ should have served as a warning. To most men, a spa is a place where women go for a few hours, to chat, gossip and gripe. Few men are sure what actually happens there and fewer are prepared to ask. Which is pretty much how most women feel about golf.

I was apprehensive as I approached the doors and this was compounded by the cloud of incense that greeted me as I entered. In the background, some kind of Far Eastern, Feng Shui music combo thing was going on and I felt a bit of a lemon when the two lady customers sitting in the reception gave me a rather disdainful once over. At least I’d changed out of my golf shoes.

The girls who worked there all wore black silk jackets emblazoned with the resort’s red logo. I gave my name and was given a clipboard in return. I was directed to a chair where I was to fill in a form about my health and the treatment I wanted.

I ticked the box for ‘Deep Massage’ and ‘Back and Shoulders’ and returned the form. Then along came Polly, a diminutive dark-haired girl who looked at me like she’d drawn the short straw. She led me away to a treatment room that was so dark I almost stumbled over the massage table. Whales and dolphins were now singing love songs to each other, the Feng Shui musicians presumably crushed by the new arrivals. More incense filled the air. What is it with that stuff anyway? It makes me want to sneeze.

I stripped to my boxers, lay face down on the table and waited for a vigorous massage that never came. No, Polly’s fingers poked and prodded at me like I was a piece of fruit and she was trying to decide if the Best Before date had expired.

And then she was done. I was told I could relax and sleep to help the treatment penetrate, but the whales had started their Westlife cover versions and I made a quick escape. By the time I left the spa and the hotel, the only thing that felt penetrated was my wallet.

Back in Blarney, one drive through the small town tells you that the economy survives on tourism. Colourful guesthouses and B&Bs make up the outskirts, which is why a laundrette must do very nicely.

‘Hang on there, my love,’ the same woman called from the back when I walked through the door. ‘I’m almost done.’

I could see her sorting through my clothes. She was a heavy-set woman in a loose blue dress and sandals. With the clouds of steam billowing around her I understood her clothing choices, as well as the rosy cheeks I had encountered the previous day. She folded my shirts and t-shirts meticulously, then the trousers and then my jocks. Clearly she was talented at her craft but I found it disturbing watching her work. As a man, I only expect to see my mother folding my underpants.

She was as friendly as can be and tucked my clothes neatly into the bag I had given her. ‘What happened to your head?’ she asked, looking at my bruise.

‘Kissing the Blarney Stone,’ I replied.

From Blarney, wearing a clean shirt and a pristine pair of underpants, I followed the R618 west to Macroom, along the course of the River Lee. Macroom Golf Club is hidden away under an archway in the centre of the small town. Blink and you miss it, but it also takes a degree of conviction to believe that it’s the entrance to a golf club. There are few golfers who expect an archway complete with towers, castellations and canons. This was the entrance to Macroom Castle which was burned to the ground in 1922. The demesne was purchased by locals in 1924 for the purpose of building a golf course. And a tasty little one it is too.

There was a Juniors competition ahead of me, some twenty boys and girls striding through the sunshine, and emitting laughter you rarely hear in the adult game. The jollity continued back in the clubhouse, with chicken and chips all round and a passion for Blackcurrant and soda.

I sat in the corner and listened to the brief speech given by the organiser of the day’s competition. He batted away the friendly jibes from his audience until the big moment came and the room fell silent. The prizes started from sixth place and, as each winner stepped forward, there was a polite round of applause. Everything was going smoothly until they got to the overall winner. As the runner-up returned to his seat, a man hustled into the room from behind the bar and grabbed the organiser. Hushed words followed as they huddled together, peering covertly at the papers the second man had with him. It was like the Oscars, and the kids were getting restless.

The man in charge nodded furiously, shrugged and then nodded some more. Then he turned back to his audience.

‘Ah,’ he began.

That wasn’t a good sign.

‘I’m sorry to say we’ll have to start all over again. A score card was missed.’ He looked slightly glum and embarrassed at this turn of events, but after some groans of exasperation the five winners stood up and returned their prizes.

The golfer with the missed card came second and fair dues to the organiser who recovered his composure and awarded seven prizes instead of six.

Can you imagine the uproar if such a thing happened on Captain’s Day? There’d be a lynching.

I was in the heart of Cork, Ireland’s largest county. Renowned for its artisan foods, it is also home to three of Ireland’s most popular cheesemakers: Charleville, Kanturk and Mitchelstown – all towns that I’d be visiting in the coming days.

I drove north, around the western edges of the Boggeragh Mountains towards Kanturk, along narrow roads with valley views and the hues of clouds that splashed the landscape with colour. I drove past a half-built bungalow, a cow standing inside with its head resting in the space where a window should be. It looked thoroughly content as it gazed out at the world. I saw plenty of such bungalows, in the most unlikely places, but this was the only one I saw that was cow-friendly. Cheese must have been more important to the economy than I’d thought.

Later that day I stepped onto the tarmac at Charleville Golf Club. A golfer approached, pulling his trolley with that despondent air of a man who’d recently been defeated by an arduous round. When he saw me he perked up.

‘Are you the fella walking around Ireland, carrying your clubs and playing all the links courses?’ he asked.

I was standing next to a camper van at a parkland course some 40 miles from the sea. My clubs were sitting on a battered trolley.

Yes, I thought, an easy mistake to make. Instead, I smiled. ‘No, that’s Tom Coyne you’re thinking of.’

A Philadelphian by the name of Tom Coyne had taken it upon himself to walk around Ireland’s coastline, carrying his golf clubs and playing every links course on the island. He had a regular column in the Irish Examiner newspaper, which was a Corkman’s newspaper of choice. This was neither the first nor the last time I was mistaken for Tom during my travels in the Rebel County.

‘What are you doing then?’

‘Playing every eighteen-hole course on the island,’ I replied proudly.

He nodded, unimpressed. ‘Good luck with that.’ He was short, rotund and in his forties, so pretty much a mirror image of myself. Except he had hair. He wandered around the camper van, looking it up and down. ‘Grand job. I’m Tony, by the way. What do you call her?’

‘Who?’ I enquired.

‘The camper van. What do you call her?’

A few choice words came to mind. ‘Nothing. I don’t call her anything.’

He looked surprised. ‘Really! I call mine Bessie. Yes, beautiful Bessie. She’s a grand old girl but not as old as this one.’ He stroked the front of the camper van like it was a beloved pet. I started feeling possessive.

‘And what does your wife think of you calling your camper Bessie?’

‘She doesn’t mind. Not at all. Sure, she’s Bessie, too. Avoids any confusion.’

What kind of confusion he was referring to, I didn’t know. In the throes of passion when he called out Bessie’s name, was he thinking of his wife or the camper van? Avoiding that kind of confusion I could understand.

I’ve always thought there were some strange folk in Cork.

Tony asked if he could step inside and I followed him in, pondering potential names.

When I had first explored the camper van – like a kid with a new toy – I discovered that I had a serious problem. This went far beyond the leaking roof, the fridge that converted food into icebergs and the shower that didn’t work. No this was properly serious. The radio/tape deck didn’t work. So no music from the latest, talentless boy band, no local ads for PJ’s Curry House or Murphy’s Showers, no sparkling wit from DJs so old they should be put back in the crypt, and no chat shows with angry callers complaining that the local newspaper hadn’t provided detailed instructions on how to use the new zebra crossing. I was bereft.

Oh, sure, the tape deck worked, but that was part of the problem because there was a tape wedged inside. James Last Plays ABBA’s Greatest HitsJames Last Plays ABBA’s Greatest Hits …Volume 1