Quarry Park Disc Golf course is quite unique in the UK. An area of 15 acres of pasture land along side the River Avon was purchased by Derek Robins, the first European to be inducted into the Disc Golf Hall of Fame, with the intention of turning it into a purpose built dedicated Disc Golf Course.
Derek's labour of love has turned a farming pasture into a beautiful disc golf course arboretum, with a mix of trees, mainly planted by himself. He has crafted the course fairways and created the disc golf course that Quarry Park is today.
This is a pay to play course with Adults on the short course paying £5 and Children £3.50. The regular course is Adults £7 and children £5 with a free hire disc 1 per person. There is also a £12 all day ticket. All of these can be booked on line or pay on arrival. There is an active club scene here and the course has been used for many tournaments. Much more information can be found on the course website at www.quarrypark.co.uk
There is ample parking, an eco-toilet with no running water but sanitiser is available. You can buy drinks and snacks on site and there are also Discs for sale. Picnic benches are also available near the shop.
There is a short course of 17 holes averaging approx 147 ft each (45m) which is suitable for beginners or more experienced players wanting to practice their short game. For a bigger challenge the long course offers 18 holes with 2 Tee boxes Red Par 54, 4910ft & Blue Par 54, 5618ft. Tee boxes are signed and are covered with astro turf. On this course there are 3 holes were you are at risk of losing a disc in the river and many do get swallowed up.
We had touched base with Derek before our trip to make sure there was room for our Motorhome in the car park. As we were short of a campsite for one night he had also very kindly offered for us to stay in the car park over night.
When we arrived Derek offered to show us the course and in fact he played 9 holes with us. He made us feel very welcome and we enjoyed chatting with him about the history of the course. We had planned to play here for 4 days and so decided, having had the introduction from Derek, that the course to tackle was the Red Course.
This course was challenging for us. It tests your skills and your nerves. Everything from open space which goes up and down, tight corridors, low ceilings, high baskets, water and a requirement for accurate putts. It battered us on the first time round but how beautiful and amazing to at least try.
I couldn't really figure out from my bag what to use on the tight tunnel shots and after our first day we chatted with Derek about discs. Due to Covid restrictions we unfortunately couldn't go in his shop so asked what he might recommend. He asked if we had tried the Duchess from
Discgolfuk . I replied no I hadn't, so Derek offered for me to have a throw on a kind of "try before you buy" principle, which was very kind. It flew so well and straight for me using my forehand that despite walking some way back from the shop, I nearly took out its window! Wow, I'll buy that please. Oops and sorry Derek!
My partner Catriona, tried this disc but found that she couldn't get the same flight from it so she tried a safe-fly version, which is made of a softer plastic, and she could get that one to fly better for her, so we took that as well. The Duchess made all the difference for me on the next few days after having a few practice shots with it. Those holes I'd struggled with first time round I was able to tackle with much more confidence.
Hole 10
Ready to rip the Duchess on 10
We played each day twice round the course and lets just say we slept very well at night. Just when you think you're getting a little fitter and then you try Quarry! This was good experience for us and although I won't bore you with all the score cards, the one below is the best we achieved off the Red Tees. Which considering where we started I think we made huge gains. I guess some of this came from familiarity of the course, as we played it each day, and also we gained confidence that we could get round a course like this. Fear of the unknown can be a negative and we had heard so much about Quarry before hand that maybe we had felt a little intimidated to start with. The one thing we had learned from playing here was just to enjoy the space and the flight!
I was beginning to feel more confident that the predominant forehand play was for me, and to just practice backhand with a view to getting out of trouble. I was getting tired of beating myself up because I couldn't throw backhand as far as Catriona, and to just be happy and positive that I could make a good round of disc golf playing the way I did.
On our last day we decided to see what the short course was like, before we moved on to our next destination. We enjoyed trying the shorter holes and it did prove that the Red Course had been challenging and we could only hope to get better scores in the future.
Our time at Quarry Park was most enjoyable and thanks very much to Derek for the stories and the laughs. We will be back to sample more of Quarry Park in the future. Here are just a few more shots of what this course has to offer.
Now we head to Cotswold View Disc Golf Course where, if you you read my Blog entry "Where it all began", you will know that this course it what lit the touch paper that started this Disc Golf journey. So follow me there for the return......
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