Old Head is one of the most photographed golf courses in the world, and one of the easiest luxury golf trips to justify from Cork purely on drive time: well under an hour, on a genuinely scenic road, to a course that’s a legitimate bucket-list stop for visiting golfers.
The Journey
At 35 km and around 40 minutes, this is one of our shorter golf routes. We take the coast road down through Belgooley and into Kinsale before continuing out to the headland itself. It’s a straightforward, well-surfaced drive, and short enough that we regularly do it as a half-day round trip rather than a full-day hire: we collect you from Cork, drop you at Old Head, wait or return later, then bring you back.
Because it’s a short drive, timing is really built around your tee time rather than the road. We work backwards from when you’re actually teeing off, allowing time to check in, warm up on the range and make the walk out to the first tee, rather than just quoting a flat 40-minute pickup.
The Experience on This Route
Golf transport is a specific enough job that it’s worth doing properly. That means bags loaded and unloaded for you, no rush getting boots and waterproofs sorted at the car, and a driver who understands that “we’ll be out around 4 hours, give or take” is a normal answer, not a problem. For a four-ball, the MPV takes bags and passengers without anyone having to hold clubs on their lap, and for bigger golf societies or a corporate outing, we run multiple vehicles or the minibus with a trailer.
Many groups also treat this as a full day out: golf at Old Head followed by lunch or dinner in Kinsale, which is just a five-minute drive back from the course and one of Ireland’s better food towns. We’re happy to build that into the booking as a single hire rather than two separate trips.
Along the Way
Kinsale itself is worth the short detour whether you stop on the way down or the way back. It’s a genuinely attractive harbour town with more good restaurants per square foot than almost anywhere else in Munster, and it sits directly on the route to Old Head, so there’s no real cost to stopping.
About Old Head Golf Links
Old Head sits on a dramatic headland jutting into the Atlantic south of Kinsale, with several holes running directly along the cliff edges. It’s consistently ranked among the most scenically extreme golf courses anywhere, and it’s a private club that operates on a green-fee visitor model, so advance booking through the club is required regardless of transport. It’s a genuinely different experience to the more traditional links courses further along the coast at Lahinch or Ballybunion: shorter as a standalone trip from Cork, and often paired with a night or two in Kinsale rather than a dedicated golf-touring itinerary.