A Buddies’ Golf Getaway to Northern France

There’s a certain kind of trip that earns its place in the calendar every single year. Not the family fortnight, not the work jolly, but the one where it’s just the lads, a boot full of clubs, and a fairway waiting on the other side of the Channel. The annual mates’ golf trip lives or dies on three things: good banter, a few proper rounds, and zero hassle getting there. Northern France delivers all three, and it’s closer than most golfers realise.

From the sand-bound classics of Le Touquet to the pines and dunes of Hardelot, this is championship golf an easy hop from the UK, with seafood, cold beer and a hotel bar to settle the day’s bets in. Golf Planet Holidays has been arranging tailor-made golf trips since 1981, and breaks here start from just £495 per person. You bring the four-balls and the windups; we’ll handle everything else.

The maths of a buddies’ trip is brutal. Get four to eight of you in one place, on the same dates, with a budget everyone agrees on and a flight nobody has to dread, and you’ve already done the hard part. Northern France quietly solves all of it.

It’s right on the doorstep, so travel is genuinely painless. Whether you cross by ferry or take the tunnel, your own car or minibus means clubs, golf bags and the inevitable case of duty-free all travel with you, no excess-baggage roulette, no airport gauntlet. You can be teeing off within a couple of hours of landing on French soil.

And once you’re there, the golf does the talking. This is a compact, golf-rich corner of France where several genuine championship layouts sit within a short drive of each other, so you can play a different course every day without long transfers eating into the banter. From £495 per person, it’s the rare trip where the quality of the golf outstrips the cost of getting to it.

This stretch of coast is home to some of the most respected golf in northern France, and Golf Planet Holidays can build your itinerary around any combination of them.

Le Touquet is the headline act. Le Touquet La Mer is the celebrated links, all sandhills, sea breeze and the kind of bouncing, running golf that rewards a bit of imagination, exactly the course your group will still be arguing about over dinner. Its sister, Le Touquet La Foret, winds through pine woodland for a calmer, more sheltered test, perfect for the morning after the night before.

Hardelot offers two contrasting gems. Hardelot Les Pins is a Tom Simpson masterpiece threading between towering pines, a course that asks for placement over power. Hardelot Les Dunes brings a more open, rolling character that complements it perfectly. Round out the trip at Belle Dune in Fort Mahon, a striking layout carved through coastal dunes and pine forest that always goes down well with groups.

Five courses, no two alike, all within easy reach, that’s a week of golf with genuine variety and plenty to settle on the leaderboard.

Pick the base that suits the trip’s mood, and we’ll arrange the rest. For a touch of class, the Hotel Barriere Le Westminster in Le Touquet is the grande dame of the resort, all old-world style and a proper bar to hold court in. The Red Fox, also in Le Touquet, is a relaxed, sociable base right in the heart of town, ideal for a group that wants the restaurants and nightlife on the doorstep. And the Best Western Hermitage in nearby Montreuil-sur-Mer puts you in one of the prettiest fortified towns in the region, with cobbled streets and cracking places to eat.

Every trip is tailor-made and enquiry-based, so we shape the hotel, the room mix and the tee times around your group rather than the other way round. Prefer the whole thing run for you? We can arrange hosted and escorted group departures, so there’s a familiar face handling logistics on the ground while you concentrate on your short game and the sweepstake.

One enquiry, one quote in pounds, one point of contact, that’s how a Golf Planet Holidays buddies’ trip works. We’ve been doing this since 1981, so the things that can derail a group trip, clashing tee times, hotels that don’t get golfers, payment splits between eight people, are exactly the things we take off your plate.

It’s all financially secure, too. Golf Planet Holidays is ATOL Protected, and every penny is held in trust with PTS until you’ve travelled, so the group’s money is safeguarded right up to the day you arrive. If your party is joining from the US or further afield, just tell us your nearest airport and we’ll quote flights as an add-on alongside the ground arrangements, so the whole trip lands as one clear price.

Tell us the dates, the number of players and how serious (or how social) you want the golf to be. We’ll come back with a tailored itinerary built from £495 per person, and all you’ll have to organise is who’s driving and who’s buying the first round.