Skipton Golf Club

Skipton Golf Club was founded in 1893 at Gargrave and moved to its present ground just outside the market town in 1896. It sits at the southern end of the Yorkshire Dales, in view of Sharphaw, Crookrise and Embsay Crag.

The card is three par 3s, thirteen par 4s and two par 5s. Sources give the par as 70 or 71 depending on the scorecard consulted. In 2018, the club’s 125th anniversary, the layout was revised and three newly designed holes were built, the largest change to the course in its history.

What it asks of you

Thirteen par 4s out of eighteen is a distinctive card, and it makes the round a sequence of second shots. There is little relief from the middle of the bag, and a player who is not striking iron shots well has nowhere to hide.

The ground is Dales upland, which means slope. Very few approach shots are played from a flat lie, and the wind up here is a factor more often than the sheltered Yorkshire parkland courses would suggest.

The 2018 work brought three new holes and a revised routing. A club that rebuilds a quarter of its holes at 125 years old is making a statement about the next quarter century rather than the last one.

What players say about it

Skipton takes visitors and is a fixture of the Yorkshire course guides. The points below summarise what recurs. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• The views over the Dales are what visitors mention first and most.
• Value is repeatedly cited: green fees well below the Yorkshire parkland courses.
• The 2018 holes are generally well received.
• The welcome and the clubhouse come up often.
• Skipton itself makes it an easy course to combine with a Dales trip.

What comes up against

• It is hilly, and walking it is real work.
• Upland ground in a Dales winter is wet and the season is effectively shorter than the club’s opening hours suggest.
• The wind is exposed on the high holes.
• Thirteen par 4s strikes some players as repetitive.

Getting there and when to go

The club is on the northern edge of Skipton in North Yorkshire, about an hour from Leeds and Manchester and forty minutes from Leeds Bradford airport.

The season is year-round, but May to September gives the firmest ground and the clearest views. Visitor tee times are booked in advance.

Green fees

Visitor rates are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, the club’s published history and encyclopaedic entries for the 1893 founding at Gargrave, the 1896 move and the 2018 changes, and public course records for the distribution of holes. Sources disagree on the par, so we give both figures rather than choose one, and we found no yardage we could confirm for the revised layout. The opinion section summarises public reviews read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations.

We have not played this course, and this page is no substitute for a round. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.