The hole n ° 10 of the golf of Sorelle, with the castle of Richemont in the background. @Macromike

Between la Dombes aux mille étangs and Bugey, land of the illustrious gourmet Brillat-Savarin, a scent of history hangs over le Sorelle golf course. Inspired by Scottish courses, this hilly 18-hole course surrounded by three-hundred-year-old oaks makes us travel - very far - in time around the green of hole n ° 3. An ancient Gallic fountain, which had curative virtues and served as a place of worship for the people of the neighboring village, stands next to one of the last "poypes" of the Ain. This huge clod of earth surrounded by wooden palisades was once used to protect itself from invaders. The hole n ° 10 has for its backdrop the castle of Richemont, dating from the XIII^e century and classified as a historic monument since 1927. A pretty XV house^e century houses the clubhouse and the golf hotel ...

It was in 1762 that the principality of Dombes was attached to the kingdom of France. This natural region made up of an original plateau morainic countlesss ponds houses the 27 holes of golf Ggovernor. The hotel and clubhouse are located in the Château du Breuil (XIV^e century) and in its outbuildings, which once housed the governor of Dombes. An ancient tradition would same reassemble this house to the conquerors of the province of Amasia during the first crusade.

The Governor Golf in the heart of the Dombes, the region with 1000 ponds.

Au south of the Dombes, 20 km from Lyon, le golf of Mionnay est réputé pour son practice in the shape of a flower petal, the Golflower. Unique in Europe, this new generation training center can accommodate up to 170 players simultaneously, day and night, summer and winter, thanks to its LED equipment and integrated heating systems.

Lhe golf course is next to Polletins castle, occupied today by a stud farm, but where between the XNUMXth^e and the XVII^e century a former abbey of Carthusian nuns. Mionnay is also the village where you could taste the new cuisine of the famous great chef Alain Chapel (three Michelin stars), who died in 1990. Closed since 2012, the legendary restaurant which stands in the heart of the village has almost warmed up its stoves. in 2018. But its doors remain, to this day, still desperately closed.

The former restaurant of Alain Chapel, in Mionnay. @DR

Resistance lands

Le Clou golf course is a par 67 designed around the pond of Dombes, just five minutes from the Parc des Oiseaux, which has one of the most important collections in Europe with 300 different species spread on 35 hectares. A about ten kilometers du course, Our Lady of the Dombes is a Trappist abbey founded in 1863, who played a central role in the Resistance. From the fall of 1940, elle welcomes Jews and resistance fighters and ssupports Maquis surrounding area by serving as a depot for weapons, ammunition and fuel tanks. The equipment is camouflaged in the barns and other outbuildings, under the straw. After the creation of the STO, in February 1943, the monastery also welcomed refractories. Many priests of Notre-Dame-des-Dombes will tortured, deported and assadesigned by the Gestapo ...

Notre-Dame-des-Dombes. @ ain-tourisme.com

Housed in a 90 hectare former hunting estate that belongs to the Dalloz family, named after the famous diamond dealer, the golf of Bresse was carved in the heart of a hundred-year-old forest, just 2 km from the town of Saint-André-le-Bouchoux, the self-proclaimed capital of the frog. On the horizon, the old fortified town of Bourg-en-Bresse almost seems to have been built to protect this beautiful green setting.

In 1600, the citadel resisted six months at the seat of the troops of Henri IV, le Franco-Savoyard treaty signed in Lyon in 1601. officialt the return of Bresse enFrance. In 1814,, durbefore the Napoleonic wars, the city is plundered by the Austrian troops in reprisal for its resistance. It's also goner of Bourg-en-Bresse that General Delestraint commands the Secret Army, during the Occupation. Laurent Gerr impersonatora was born there in 1967.

General Charles Delestraint. @DR

Created in 1964 on the grounds of the château de l'Aumusse, which belongs to the Order of the Templars in XI^e and XII^e century before being kept until 1789 by thehospitaliers of SAinJohn of Jerusalem, le golf of the Commandery spreads its prasine wings near the village of the famous star chef Georges Blanc and only five minutes from Mâcon, bordered by the Saône, which marks the border of the department.

The name of the city is attestede for the first time par Julius Caesar, in the middle ofu I^er century BC in the Gallic Wars. At the dawn of the Renaissance, it is one of the first cities of the kingdom of France to have a printing press. From March 13 to 14, 1815, the Emperor, on the way to Paris from Elba Island, y staye same at the Hôtel du Sauvage, destroyed in the 70s after a few decades of abandonment. During the Second World War, Mâcon is the first city located en free zone, between Paris and Lyon. Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) and, in another genre, the footballer Antoine Griezmann (in 1997) was born there.

The Sauvage hotel in Mâcon, in 1910, where Napoleon resided a century earlier. @DR

Maupassant, Bernanos and Alexandre Dumas…

Near the Gorges de l'Oignin, on the edge of the Samognat lake - which is knownt long periods of famine until the XNUMXth century^e century -, Haut-Bugey golf course is a 9-hole compact. It was in Louchon, in the woods of Samognat, that part of the booty of the Companions of Jehu, whose story inspired a novel by Alexandre Dumas. In March 1800, more precisely on the night of 25 to 26 Ventôse of Year VIII of the republican calendar, these royalist supporters had attacked the diligence from Geneva to Lyon, near Lake Sylans.

A 20 km from Geneva,s 18 holes du Gonville area are situated on the outskirts of the village of Saint-Jean-de-Gonville, occupied successively in its history by Genevans, Savoyards, Bernese and Spanish. The oldest historic site in the village conceals des cup stones, like the one du Paray, located in the woods of Mornex. EThey were brought to this location by the Alpine glacier during the last glaciation of the Erae quaternary. Long before our era, qsome tribes y practiced their rites and sacrifices.

The Paray stone. @DR

Le Domaine de Divonne golf course is above all a visual experience. You meander through a wide variety of century-old trees (spruces, Atlas cedars, Italian poplars, Virginia tulip trees, etc.) with Switzerland within driving distance and Mont-Blanc as a backdrop. Arnold Palmer, Severiano Ballesteros, Lee Trevino or even Ernie Els have trodden its majestic fairways before, who knows, to quench their thirst in the famous spa town of Divonne-les-Bains, particularly appreciated by Gallo-Romans for the quality of its water ( "Divona" means "divine water" in Latin), and who has been treating psychosomatic disorders since 1848. Guy De Maupassant (in 1891) and Georges Bernanos (in 1930), among others, had a cure there.

Guy de Maupassant. @DR

Without forgetting Voltaire

In the Pays de Gex near the Swiss border, between the Jura mountains to the north and the Alps to the south, the cuff golf adjoins the town of Ferney, where Voltaire spent the last twenty years of his existence, in his castle. The course is also located 1 km from Prévessin-Moëns, which hit the headlines in January 1993. It is in this small town that Jean-Claude Romand murdered his entire family, before being condemned by the Bourg-en-Bresse Assize Court to life imprisonment. Just a few minutes' drive away is the jiva hill golf and its 9 holes with synthetic greens, designed in the heart of a 5 * hotel complex.

The apartments at Château de Voltaire, in Fernay.

Toudays in Gex country, attached to France since 1601, le golf of Saint-Genis est a 9-hole course rural and wooded traced on the road to Geneva. Saint-Genis-Pouilly hosts a large part of the particle physics facilities on its territory. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the Mecca for world basic research. The tunnel housing the 27-kilometer loop from Large Hadron Collider,e famous particle accelerator, passes a hundred meters below theand golf. It's at CERN that the municipality owes most of its development since the mid-60s, today becoming the 6^e the most visited tourist site in Ain.

It is claimed that several treasures were buried in the surroundings between 250 and 300 AD during the invasions of the Alamans and then, around 406, during the Burgundian invasions. Who knows, maybe by looking for your ball, after a nasty slice, you will hit the jackpot ...

Franck crudo

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