Football golf at Cricklade House: great fun, rough around the edges

Football Golf is one of those things that sounds slightly ridiculous until you actually do it. Golf, but with footballs. No clubs, no complicated rules, no need to know your nine iron from your pitching wedge. Just a ball, a course, a map and the quiet hope that your first kick does not immediately disappear into long grass.

Cricklade House Hotel was the closest option I found in this corner of the region, so when I came across it while looking for places to review for Cotswold Digest, it seemed worth trying.

I first spotted it through OpenTable, where I thought it was listed at £5 per person. I may have misread that, because by the time we visited it was £10 per person, which is also what OpenTable now shows. Either way, it was not a huge outlay.

The spa and leisure page on the Cricklade House website was down when I tried to book, so I rang the hotel directly. The booking itself was easy enough. Our first attempt was washed out by thunder and lightning, and the hotel moved us to the following week without any fuss.

So far, so good.

Arriving at Cricklade House

Cricklade House has a lovely setting. The hotel sits above open grounds, with mature trees, long views and a gentle countryside feel. On that front, it makes sense as a place for an outdoor activity. There is space, there are views, and there is enough room to wander without feeling penned in.

We arrived with our own footballs, although the hotel does have balls available if you need them. At reception we paid £10 each and were given a printed map and a pen, with the back of the map doubling as our scorecard.

A proper scorecard would have helped. It is a small thing, but when you have paid £20 for two people, those little touches make the activity feel more considered. As it was, keeping score on the back of a printed map added to the sense that the course had not quite been given the attention it needed.

The pen gave up after two holes.

That turned out to be quite fitting, because the map was not much more reliable.

The course

The first thing to understand is that this is a shared course.

Cricklade House runs 18 holes of disc golf and 9 holes of football golf across the same stretch of grounds. The map gives you the general layout and notes that footgolf holes are marked with flags, with some disc golf baskets also on the greens. That sounds useful enough until you are actually standing out on the grass, trying to work out whether the thing ahead of you is a football golf target, a disc golf basket, a tee marker, or simply part of the scenery.

Some parts overlap, some do not, and the same general area is used for tee points, football golf targets, disc golf baskets, flags and signs.

In theory, that should work.

In practice, it was confusing from the first tee.

The receptionist tried to explain where everything was, but even she seemed a little unsure how the layout matched the map. Once we got outside, the first tee was not obvious, the first target was even less obvious, and we spent a fair amount of time wondering whether we were in the right place, aiming at the right thing, or about to invent our own version of the game entirely.

Which, at points, we may well have done.

The course uses sunken targets in the ground for football golf, but they are not always easy to spot. Some holes sit beneath the disc golf baskets, while others have their own separate targets. In theory, that is fine. In practice, it only works if everything is clearly marked.

Sunken football golf target in the grass at Cricklade House

The problem is that some flags were missing and some markers looked damaged. Once that happens, you are left trying to work out whether the hole is meant to share a disc golf basket or sit separately beside it. Without clear markers, there is often no obvious way of knowing.

That was really the issue throughout. It was not simply that the course was shared. It was that the course did not give you enough information to play it confidently. Too often we were left standing in the general area of a hole, looking at the map, looking at the ground, looking at the basket, and making our best guess.

One hole was so unclear that we eventually decided a large depression in the ground must be the target and played towards that. By that point, it felt less like following a course and more like settling for whatever seemed most plausible.

A good idea that needs more care

The frustrating thing is that football golf itself is a good idea.

It works because it is simple. You kick a ball, you aim for a target, you keep score if you want to, and the rest happens naturally. It would suit families, groups of friends, older children, teenagers, work groups, or even a double date if you wanted something a bit different and mildly competitive.

You do not need to be good at football. You do not need to be especially fit. You just need to be happy walking around, laughing at bad shots, and pretending the one that went wildly off course was part of a clever strategy.

The setting at Cricklade House should help. There are moments where the views open up, the hotel sits nicely behind you, and the course wanders through mature trees and long grass. We even saw a deer in the grounds, although naturally it disappeared before I could get the camera out. Very rude of it. Classic deer.

But the course itself feels like an afterthought.

The grass was long across much of the course, not just in the areas that seemed to be intended as rough. The greens were not especially green and had plenty of thistles and rough patches. Some signs were partly swallowed by the grass. Some targets were hard to distinguish until you were almost standing on top of them. The little white out of bounds flags did not always make much sense.

The tee areas and markers also felt tired. More importantly, it was not always clear whether you were walking towards a disc golf tee, a football golf tee, or a shared one.

There was no clear 'this way to the next hole' signage, which meant too much of the round was spent trying to interpret the course rather than just playing it.

That matters because football golf should be easy to follow. The fun should come from the kicking, the bad shots, the ridiculous angles and the quiet competitiveness. It should not come from trying to decode a map like you have stumbled into a low-budget treasure hunt.

The small details

Near the entrance to the course, about 100 yards in, there was a pair of white heels left on a concrete slab.

Sunken football golf target in the grass at Cricklade House

They may well have been from a wedding or event over the weekend. Someone probably took them off, put them down, and forgot about them. These things happen.

But we visited on a Monday evening, and they looked like they had been there a while. What struck me was not the shoes themselves, but the fact that they were still there at all.

At a hotel like Cricklade House, those little details matter. Staff, guests and visitors must have passed them. Yet nobody seemed to have moved them.

And oddly, that summed up how the course felt too.

Not abandoned. Not terrible. Just not quite important enough to anyone.

What it was actually like

And yet, despite all that, we had fun.

For around an hour and a half on the course, and closer to two hours out altogether, neither of us looked at our phones except to keep score after the pen gave up. We chatted. We caught up. We argued about where the next hole was. We took the wrong line more than once. We kicked footballs up slopes, into rough grass, past flags, towards baskets and occasionally in the general direction of something that may or may not have been a target.

That is the part football golf gets right.

It gives you something to do without demanding too much from you. There is enough structure to keep things moving, enough competition to make it funny, and enough walking between shots for conversation to happen naturally.

It is easy to imagine a better version of this at Cricklade House. They have clearly promoted the activity before, with banners by the roadside on a fairly busy route, and the hotel already has the useful extras nearby. You could play a round, then head to the bar or restaurant afterwards if you wanted to make more of it.

With a bit more thought, it could be turned into a proper summer activity: a family ticket, group pricing, a World Cup special, a simple competition, clearer signs, a proper scorecard and shorter grass around the targets.

Because the activity itself has promise.

The course just needs to meet it halfway.

The honest verdict

We enjoyed the experience more than the location.

Football golf is a genuinely fun outdoor activity. It would work for families, friends, teenagers, work groups, couples, or anyone who wants something active without it feeling like proper exercise.

Cricklade House has the setting for it. The grounds are attractive, the views are good, and £10 per person is not wildly expensive.

But you are still paying for more than access to an open space and a basic printed map. A clearer route, a proper scorecard, visible targets and a course that feels checked and ready would have made a big difference.

The shared disc golf and football golf layout needs clearer on-course signage, shorter grass around the targets, and markers that are visible and intact. As it stands, too much of the round is spent working out what you are meant to be aiming at.

With a bit more care, it could be a really nice low-key activity. At the moment, it feels more like something that has been added to the grounds rather than properly built into them.

Would we play football golf again? Absolutely.

Would we come back here for it? Probably not.

Good to know

Football golf at Cricklade House costs £10 per person.

Balls are available from reception, although bringing your own is recommended.

The course starts at the back of the hotel grounds and is shared with the disc golf course.

The map is provided but the route is not always obvious once you are on the course.

Wear trainers or sensible shoes. The ground is uneven in places and there is a lot of long grass.

Allow around 90 minutes for the round, or closer to two hours if you take your time, get slightly lost, or decide to debate the map like it is legally binding.

Cricklade House Hotel, Common Hill, Cricklade, Wiltshire SN6 6HA · crickladehotel.co.uk