Bellingham Golf Club

At a glance

Club	Bellingham Golf Club
Location	Boggle Hole, Bellingham, Northumberland, NE48 2DT
Founded	1893, extended from nine to eighteen holes in 1996
Designer of the new nine	Ian Wilson, club secretary
Type	Natural parkland on rolling, hilly ground above the North Tyne
Played from	Yellow tees, 5,872 yards, par 70
Course rating / slope	69.1 / 125
Other tees	White 70.3 / 128, par 70. Red 71.6 / 122, par 71
Shape of the par	Four par 3s, twelve par 4s, two par 5s
My score	79 gross, 41 Stableford points, index 13.2 down to 12.6

First impressions

Bellingham calls itself Northumberland’s friendliest golf club, which is the sort of claim that usually makes me suspicious. Ten minutes after arriving I had stopped being suspicious. The welcome here is the real thing: unhurried, genuinely pleased to see a visitor, and entirely without the faint air of tolerance that some clubs extend to anyone who is not a member.

The setting helps. You are in the North Tyne valley, roughly midway between Hadrian’s Wall and the Scottish border, with Kielder Water and the Border Forest Park up the road. Stand on almost any tee and there is moorland on the skyline. On a clear late-August afternoon it is one of the best-looking places to play golf in the North of England, and that is before a ball has been struck.

Ian’s Cairn

Partway round you come across a boulder with a bronze plaque on it. One half is a map of the course. The other is a short inscription in memory of Ian Wilson, who died on 2 March 2006 aged 49, and whose determination, vision and design turned a pleasant nine holes into the eighteen you are standing on.

Wilson was the club secretary. He was also captain in the centenary year of 1993 and won the club championship here thirteen times. When Bellingham extended to eighteen holes in 1996, he drew the new nine himself, and the club has never pretended otherwise or gone looking for a bigger name to put on it. That the memorial doubles as the course map, so every visitor who reads his name is also working out where the 11th goes, is one of the most quietly affecting things I have come across on a golf course.

The front nine

The card reads short. At 5,872 yards off the yellows with twelve par 4s and only two par 5s, it looks on paper like a course you can take apart. The opening holes encourage that idea. The 1st at 362 yards and the 2nd at 267 are both eminently playable, and the 3rd at 301 and the 5th at 334 are the kind of short par 4s where a good drive leaves a wedge. I birdied both of them and stood on the 6th tee two under par, feeling considerably better about myself than the situation warranted.

Bellingham then got to work. The 6th and 7th are longer and played across ground that tilts in ways the eye does not entirely pick up. The 8th is the longest hole on the card at 546 yards. The 9th is a 170-yard par 3 that takes more club than you think.

Two under through five, eleven over the last thirteen. The card at Bellingham is a trap, and a very polite one.

The back nine

The inward half is where the ground does most of the damage. The 10th climbs. The 11th is a 523-yard par 5 that ruined my card, though in fairness the hole had less to do with it than I did. The 12th and 15th are honest par 4s played across sloping ground where a level stance is something you earn rather than expect.

The two short holes coming in are the best of the quartet. The 14th at 130 yards is barely a wedge and entirely capable of embarrassing you. The 17th at 155 is the better hole, played to a green where the surrounding contour gathers a good shot and rejects an average one.

Then the 18th, which the club regards as its signature and which several visiting golfers have described as the jewel in Northumberland’s crown. At 360 yards from the yellow tee it is not long. It is uphill, awkward and unforgiving of a tired swing at the end of a hilly round, and it finishes right below the clubhouse windows. I made five and was glad to get off it.

The ground

What makes Bellingham interesting is not architecture in the Colt or Hawtree sense. It is terrain. The course runs across land that rises, falls, tilts and folds, and very little has been done to flatten any of it. The consequence is a course full of blind tee shots, forced carries over rough hollows, and approaches where the ball finishes fifteen feet above or below your feet.

Purists will call some of it unfair, and on a first visit they have a point. You cannot see where several shots finish. There are spots where local knowledge is worth two or three strokes. But there is also something honest about a course that uses the land it was given instead of importing a hundred thousand tonnes of soil to make it behave. Every hole here looks like it grew where it is.

Conditioning

Better than a club of this size and price has any business producing. The greens in late August were quick, true and consistent from the 1st to the 18th, which is the mark of a greenkeeping team that knows exactly what it is doing with limited resources. Fairways were cut tight and clean. The rough had colour in it after a dry spell, which honestly improved the look of the place.

There is no manicured resort presentation and no attempt at one. Bunkering is sparse, with several greens defended by mounding and hollows rather than sand. What Bellingham does, it does properly, and the number of visiting golfers who remark that it is in better shape than courses charging three times as much is not an accident.

Two honest criticisms

First, the blind shots. Four or five is characterful. Bellingham has more than that, and if you have come to play to a score rather than to enjoy yourself, some of them will grate. A first visit is partly a reconnaissance exercise, and you should go in expecting that rather than resenting it.

Second, the walk. This is hilly ground and the climbs are relentless rather than dramatic. Visitors regularly finish saying they are not used to banks and hills, and they are not being soft. Buggies are available and on this course they are worth the money for a lot of golfers. There is also a holiday lodge development visible above one of the holes, which does the view no favours, though it is a small thing set against everything around it.

The verdict

Bellingham is not the best golf course in the North East and it does not claim to be. What it is, comfortably, is the best value, and the friendliest, and one of the two or three most beautifully situated. For anyone touring Northumberland, or staying near Kielder, or simply willing to drive an hour for something different, it is an easy recommendation.

It is also the strongest argument I have found for why a rankings table needs more than one column. On architecture it finishes behind both Brancepeth and Wynyard. On welcome, on setting and on what you get for your money it beats them both without much of a contest. If you judge a round by how much you enjoyed the four hours rather than by the pedigree of the man who drew the plans, Bellingham moves a long way up the list.

I shot 79 for 41 points, my best round of the summer, and cut my handicap index. That tells you the course is gettable. What the total does not show is that I was two under after five holes and eleven over for the remaining thirteen, which tells you rather more.

The card

Played from the yellow tees on 29 August 2026. Par 70, 5,872 yards, course rating 69.1, slope 125. Course handicap 14, 41 Stableford points.

Birdies at the 3rd and 5th, then a long, polite unravelling. Only one hole on the back nine went worse than a bogey, and that was the 11th.

The scores

Bellingham finishes just behind Wynyard because design and layout carries the most weight, and Hawtree’s routing is the stronger piece of work. On welcome and on value it scores 9.5, higher than anywhere else I have played for this site. Weight those as heavily as architecture and Bellingham would climb a long way.

Practical information

Bellingham Golf Club, Boggle Hole, Bellingham, Northumberland, NE48 2DT. Roughly an hour and a quarter from Durham and half an hour north west of Hexham.

Visitors and societies are welcome and tee times are booked online. Check current green fees with the club, though Bellingham has a long-standing reputation as one of the cheapest good rounds in the North of England.

Buggies are available and are worth considering on this terrain.

Three sets of tees. White 6,093 yards and yellow 5,872 yards, both par 70. Red par 71.

Nearby and worth pairing into a trip: Kielder Water and the Border Forest Park, Hadrian’s Wall, and the golf at Hexham and Slaley Hall to the south.

Reviewed after a round on 29 August 2026 from the yellow tees. Green fee paid in full, no hospitality received. All photographs taken on the day.