The golf courses that could fall into the sea

Heavy wind and rainfall in recent years has meant that a number of golf courses are in danger of falling into the sea.

Montrose Golf Links is the fifth oldest golf course in the world.

Work to halt its dunes being washed away has been deployed since the course first began to show the effects of coastal erosion about 20 years ago.

Since then more of the course has disappeared into the sea and now a rescue plan is being put together to save the historic course.

Golspie Golf Club in Scotland, which borders the North Sea, saw its local coastal defences breached at the end of 2012. Water spread more than 160 yards inland, flooding most of the links course.

In places the water was 12 feet deep, and it brought with it boulders, some weighing around a tonne each. The destruction was so bad that Golspie Golf Club’s seventh tee completely disappeared.

Last summer, after a lot of work, the full 18 holes re-opened.

And council planners have backed Caldy Golf Club in Merseyside’s application to maintain existing rock armour coastal defences on the banks of the River Dee.

But its local council has warned: “In the long-term, works such as this – which only protect from tidal damage, can only slow erosion, rather than stopping it.

“Eventually the golf club will have to decide when the only practical way forward is to create additional playing area on fields owned inland to the clubhouse.”