The Firm & Fast Golf Podcast · Shane Derby

Common Grounds with Richard Pennell

·1 hr 36 min·5 clips

Cleve Hill is "a freak of nature" with pure links turf on a mountain above Cheltenham.

Shane Darby opens by apologizing for the show's recent silence. Real life and guest-scheduling problems got in the way. Richard Pennell returns as a friend of the pod. The conversation centers on Pennell's book, Common Grounds, and the idea of common land in Britain. Shane quotes the Foundation for Common Lands to frame the subject. Common land is described as privately owned land with rights of common, most often for grazing animals. The history reaches back to Magna Carta in 1215. It once supported poorer rural communities with wood, bracken, and pasture. Over one third of England's moorland is common land. At one time, nearly half of Britain was common land. From the 16th century onward, enclosure pushed common land out of the areas most suited to agricultural improvement. That shift helps explain why so much of it survives in places with low agricultural potential but high conservation value and natural beauty, such as Dartmoor and the Lake District. The tone stays warm and grounded rather than academic. Later, the talk turns to a visit to a dramatic links with welcoming staff and two distinct routings. Pennell describes the front line as so busy that they kept looping it and replaying it many times because of slower groups ahead. He says the wild Atlantic routing up into the dunes felt otherworldly and almost too good to be true. The course's range, the changing weather, and the lack of over-designed certainty make it feel like a proper peak experience. He and Shane keep circling back to how golf can be both intimate and epic at once. The episode closes with that same mix of gratitude, travel talk, and golf obsession.

As heard by us

A book chat that opens into golf, common land, and the feel of a wild links.

Richard Pennell's visit on The Firm & Fast Golf Podcast starts with a book conversation and keeps widening from there. Shane Darby gives it room, moving through common land, the rights tied to it, and the old history around it before settling into the practical feel of places…

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Why you'd press play

Hear how common land history and a wild links round sit side by side.

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