Terre Blanche Golf Club (Château course)

Terre Blanche Golf Club (Château course): Originally intended as a wholly private facility, Terre Blanche's fabulous Château course now accepts a limited amount of outside visitor play. This wonderfully scenic and challenging 18-hole championship layout is complemented by the slightly shorter Riou course (which remains private, but can be played by resort guests). Designed by Englishman Dave Thomas, both courses provide sumptuous views onto the surrounding Provence countryside, which displays an exuberant mosaic of tree-clad hills and rustic villages.

The generally good-width and immaculately presented fairways on the Château course weave through a quiet forest of mature oaks and tall pines. A championship layout in every sense, the Château's many elevation changes are occasionally accompanied by tumbling rock-filled water hazards. The most notable of these comes at the wonderful downhill par-5 11th - the layout's signature hole.

In the middle of the front-nine, the course opens out around an attractive lake, which you'll need to navigate around at the 4th, 5th and 6th holes. A smaller lake also threatens at the 10th and 17th on the inward-nine. Stylish and often expansive fairway bunkering gives way to smaller though no less daunting sand traps around the usually large and undulating greens.

A handful of large new villas flank one or two holes, as do one or two much older ruins. But there's nothing here to detract from the naturalness and scenic beauty of Terre Blanche's most elegant Château course.