Toulouse is not a golf destination in the sense of a seaside resort: it is a city, and that is precisely its charm. You sleep between the Capitole and the Garonne, play a quarter of an hour's drive away, and walk back to dinner through brick streets that turn a pinkish orange as the sun goes down. The capital of Occitanie has kept a human scale, riverside quays where people sit in the evening, and first-rate tables.
The courses surround the city without resembling one another. To the south, Golf Club de Toulouse occupies the hillsides of Vieille-Toulouse, with the Garonne valley below and, on clear days, the Pyrenees on the horizon. To the west, La Ramée lays out its flat fairways beneath the oaks of Tournefeuille. To the north-east, Palmola climbs and dips through the wooded countryside of Buzet-sur-Tarn. Three characters in three days, never more than half an hour in the car.
It is also home ground for us: Golf Trip Planner is based in Toulouse, and these are the courses we know best. Three or four nights are enough to play them all, keep a morning for Saint-Sernin and the Jacobins, and finish with lunch beside the Canal du Midi. The city works well for groups in which not everyone plays: there is plenty to keep everyone busy between tee times.
