Taking a quick break from tales of last week's adventures in Northumberland (final instalment tonight, don't forget to set your Sky Plus... let's face it we must be due a channel), I discovered a wonderful golf course yesterday.

It's called Greys Green Golf Club, although I prefer its informal name, The Dog Golf Club, so called because it lies on Dog Lane next to The Dog pub, and not because of any antics in the expansive car park.

The Dog is a bit different to your average golf club around here. There are plenty of courses in Berks and Bucks, but you're talking upwards of £30 just to play one round, and you'll need to abide by all kinds of rules governing what you wear and when you play.

At The Dog, all you do is turn up and play. Wear what you like, play when you like, to the extent that if there's no one from the club to take your money because you're too early, just go round anyway and pay when you get back.

And yes, you can even take the dog around with you, and it doesn't have to be on the lead if it behaves itself. I saw one lively golden retriever living up to its name by haring after each of its owner's shots, finding the ball, picking it up and waiting patiently for the owner to arrive. It must be like having a portable ball-washer for your entire round.

The relaxed dress code and open invitation to visitors is the hallmark of a municipal course, but this isn't one. It was set up by a local farmer just over a decade ago and has grown from a rough-around-the-edges nine hole affair to having two nine hole courses and a full eighteen-hole course, all set in the lush South Oxfordshire countryside. A round of 18 holes here costs you about a tenner - anywhere else you're paying three times that.

This is all brilliant, but there's just one problem. It doesn't have planning permission.

Well that's not entirely true: there is some planning permission, granted retrospectively following a series of appeals, for the area occupied by one of the nine-hole courses. But around 27 of the 36 holes here seem to be living on borrowed time, with a public enquiry due at the beginning of May.

See, for some reason it seems people in the area don't like the golf course being there. When the course has been denied planning permission in the past (which doesn't appear to have affected it in the slightest - one suspects the local council may feel a little toothless in this respect), the reason cited has been that it diminishes the allure of the landscape.

That's poppycock as far as I'm concerned. This area of the country is not short on good-looking landscape, and the golf course, far from spoiling it, is a positive encouragement to local people to go out and enjoy it. With its low cost and relaxed attitude, the course naturally attracts people who maybe don't normally play golf and, dare I say it, don't normally get out and do this kind of thing much. When I played yesterday I was waved through by four sets of golfers who all considered themselves worse/slower than me - and I'm crap! If I'm going round feeling like the Zach Johnson to their Brett Wetterich, then clearly this is a course for everybody. I think it should be encouraged as a going concern, not persecuted.

Of course the real issue here is one of consistency. Given that the golf course didn't hang around to see if it would get planning permission and just built 36 holes anyway, the council are going to look a bit silly granting it the right to be there if they've had lots of similar requests from other, more patient ventures. Indeed, inspecting the planning permission documents, it looks like this is the main concern: the council know the golf course technically breaks policy at local, regional and even national level.

So we wait with bated breath for the outcome of the public enquiry. I would be a bit miffed, to say the least, if a golf course I've only just found is whipped from under my feet barely a month later! And I'm improving, too. I finished last week's round in Northumberland 16 over par after 9 holes - yesterday I was a mere 15 over par. At this rate I'll be playing off scratch by July...