Dunstable Downs Golf Club

Dunstable Downs Golf Club is set on the chalk escarpment above Dunstable that gives the club its name, at the point where the Chiltern Hills reach their northern edge in Bedfordshire. The Downs themselves rise sharply above the town, a well-known stretch of open chalk grassland managed by the National Trust and popular for walking and gliding, offering some of the highest ground in this part of southern England with views across the Vale of Aylesbury to the west. Dunstable grew up at the crossing of two ancient routes, Watling Street and the Icknield Way, and remains a working market town rather than a purely commuter settlement, sitting a few miles from Luton and within reach of the M1 corridor. The escarpment's chalk geology drains freely compared with the clay vales below, a characteristic shared by much of the Chiltern ridge as it runs south-west from here through Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire towards the Thames.