Luxury Golf Tours – Playing the Royal Courses of the North West
A luxury golf tour of the North West is one of the very few itineraries in British sport where three Open Championship venues sit within forty miles of one another, and a chauffeur who knows that coastline turns a genuine logistical puzzle into a straightforward week of golf. Manner Borne Chauffeurs provides a luxury chauffeur service for visiting golfers playing Royal Birkdale, Royal Lytham and St Annes and Royal Liverpool, together with the outstanding links courses threaded between them along the run of dunes known, with some justification, as England’s Golf Coast.
Three Royal Courses on One Stretch of Coast
The concentration is remarkable. From Hoylake on the Wirral to Lytham St Annes in Lancashire is something over forty miles of coastline, and within it sit three clubs carrying the Royal prefix and a share of Open Championship history that few regions anywhere can match. What makes the area work as a tour rather than three separate trips is proximity, but proximity on a map and proximity on the road are not the same thing, and the Mersey estuary sits squarely between the northern and southern halves of the coast.
Royal Birkdale and the Southport Dunes
Royal Birkdale occupies the southern edge of Southport, and its holes run through valleys between towering sandhills that shelter the fairways while doing nothing at all to calm the wind coming off the Irish Sea. The art deco clubhouse, built in 1935 and modelled on the lines of a ship, is one of the most recognisable buildings in golf. Birkdale has staged the Open eleven times, most recently in 2026, and the honours board inside reads as a history of the modern game. Arrival at a course of this standing on a competition morning benefits from a chauffeur who knows where to set down without joining the queue for the members’ car park, and the surrounding chauffeur service Birkdale area is covered as standard.
Royal Lytham and St Annes
Royal Lytham is the outlier of the three, and deliberately so. Founded in 1886 with the present course laid out in 1897, it received its Royal title from George V shortly before hosting its first Open in 1926, the championship won by Bobby Jones. Unusually for a links, it does not sit beside the sea at all, but inland behind housing and a railway line. It opens with a par three, which is rare enough to unsettle visitors on the first tee, and its principal defence is bunkering of exceptional density, well beyond a hundred and seventy in total across a par seventy layout of a little over seven thousand yards. St Annes-on-the-Sea station sits under a mile away, which matters for players joining a tour part way through.
Royal Liverpool at Hoylake
Royal Liverpool, founded in 1869 and known universally as Hoylake, has hosted thirteen Opens, the most recent in 2023. It staged the first Amateur Championship in 1885, and the stretch running along the River Dee shoreline now culminates in the short fifteenth, Little Eye, added in the course’s recent reworking. The club sits within the wider chauffeur service Hoylake area, with the neighbouring chauffeur service West Kirby a few minutes along the coast and a natural base for players staying on the Wirral rather than in Liverpool itself.
The Courses Between the Royals
A tour built only around the Royals misses much of what makes the coast exceptional. Hillside sits immediately alongside Birkdale and is argued by many to be its equal. Formby, founded in 1888, and Southport and Ainsdale, which staged the Ryder Cup in both 1933 and 1937, are within a few minutes of one another, and West Lancashire and Wallasey complete a group that has between them hosted a considerable share of the amateur championship calendar. Grouping these around the marquee rounds is where local knowledge earns its place, because the chauffeur service Southport area alone holds enough golf for several days.
Clubs, Luggage and Players
The practical constraint on any golf tour is that four players with bags, trolleys and a week of luggage do not fit comfortably into a vehicle sized for four passengers and briefcases. The Mercedes-Benz V-Class XLWB carries a full group with room behind for equipment, and where a party is larger or the luggage volume unusual, the Ford Tourneo luggage van runs alongside the passenger vehicle so that nothing travels on laps. The dedicated golf chauffeur service is built around this pattern of travel rather than adapted to it.
Timing a Multi-Course Week
Tee times on this coast are frequently early, and the roads do not always cooperate. Moving from the Wirral clubs to Southport means either the Mersey tunnels and the coastal route north, or the M53 and M56 inland and back out again, and the choice depends entirely on the hour. A chauffeur working these journeys regularly plans the direction of travel around the tunnel traffic rather than around the shortest distance, which is the difference between a relaxed warm-up and a rushed arrival. Dress codes at these clubs are taken seriously, and a vehicle waiting at the clubhouse after the round removes any question of driving afterwards.
Arranging a Golf Tour Chauffeur
Manner Borne Chauffeurs covers the full length of the coast, from the Wirral clubs through Southport and Formby and north into Lancashire, with vehicles and chauffeurs allocated for the duration of a tour rather than booked journey by journey. For arrangements across Merseyside, Southport and the Wirral, call 0151 909 3855, and for tours beginning in Manchester or running north into Lancashire, call 0161 532 4444. Why just arrive when you can arrive in style.
