Golf in Yorkshire & the North-East

Yorkshire is quietly one of the great golf counties — a cluster of superb inland courses steeped in the game's history, from the first course Alister MacKenzie ever designed to the venue of the first Ryder Cup on British soil. Add a genuine championship links on the north-east coast and a spectacular riverside parkland, and you have a rich, well-priced trip with the Dales, the Moors and the spa town of Harrogate on hand.

Ganton, near Scarborough, is a glorious curiosity — a course that plays like a links yet sits seven miles from the sea, on sandy ground clothed in ferocious gorse. It was Harry Vardon's club, and it has hosted the Ryder Cup, the Curtis Cup and the Walker Cup. On the moors above Leeds sit two Alister MacKenzie treasures: Alwoodley, the very first course MacKenzie ever designed — a living blueprint from the man who went on to create Augusta National — and Moortown, host of the first Ryder Cup on British soil in 1929, famous for its "Gibraltar" par-3.

Down on the South Yorkshire border, Lindrickis hallowed ground — the scene of Great Britain & Ireland's famous 1957 Ryder Cup win, on high limestone heath. In the Dales, Ilkley is a lovely riverside parkland along the Wharfe — where Colin Montgomerie grew up — and superb value. And up on the Teesside coast, Seaton Carew is a genuine championship links, one of the oldest clubs in England, with a famously brutal finish.

Harrogate — the elegant Victorian spa town — is the ideal base for the Leeds heaths and Ilkley, with Leeds itself close by. Scarborough and the Yorkshire coast suit a Ganton trip, and Leeds Bradford airport is central to it all.

In Harrogate, Rudding Park is a superb golf-and-spa country-house resort, while the historic Old Swan — where Agatha Christie was famously found after her 1926 disappearance — is full of character. Near the coast, Scarborough's grand seaside hotels put you close to Ganton.

No trip to the county is complete without Bettys, the beloved Yorkshire tea rooms in Harrogate and Ilkley — an institution since 1919. For dinner, The Box Treein Ilkley — where Marco Pierre White trained — is one of the north's classic fine-dining rooms, and Harrogate and Leeds are full of excellent restaurants and traditional pubs.

The Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moorsbracket the region with some of England's finest walking and driving country. Fountains Abbey near Ripon is a breathtaking UNESCO site, the walled city of York with its Minster is close, and Ilkley Moorabove the golf — of the famous song — is a bracing hour's walk to the Cow and Calf rocks.

Pair it with the Golf Coast across the Pennines, or read the best courses in England.