Standing on the 16th green at Golf Club d’Amiens, you can see a tower rising from the ridgeline roughly ten kilometres to the southeast. That’s the Villers-Bretonneux Australian National Memorial, the place where 10,773 Australians who died in France with no known grave have their names carved in stone. Behind it sits the Sir John Monash Centre.
It’s a striking sightline. You’re holding a putter. And you’re looking directly at the memorial to your countrymen.
Golf Club d’Amiens celebrated its centenary in 2025, making it one of the oldest clubs in northern France. Founded in 1925, just seven years after the Armistice, it was built on ground that had served as a German munitions depot during the war. The scars are still visible: subtle depressions in the fairways on holes 14 and 18 are remnants of shell explosions over a century ago. The club president has confirmed that unexploded ordnance is still occasionally unearthed during groundskeeping. After World War II, the entire course had to be demined before play could resume.
The course sits in the heart of the Somme, near the fields where the Battle of Amiens began on 8 August 1918, the opening of the Hundred Days Offensive that ended the war. The Australian Corps under Monash and the Canadian Corps spearheaded an attack that advanced 11 kilometres in a single day, prompting Ludendorff to call it the “black day of the German Army.” The golf course at Amiens sits within that advance.
The 18-hole parkland layout was originally established as nine holes, expanded to its current form in 1977 by British architect Frank Pennink. At 6,006 metres, par 72, it’s a proper test, particularly the 18th, rated handicap 2, a long par 4 flanked by hawthorn hedges (the course’s nickname is “Les Aubépines,” the Hawthorns) with a water hazard on the left and green slopes described by reviewers as worthy of Augusta.
In summer, the chalky subsoil creates such fast, firm conditions that the course plays like inland links, a rare characteristic for a parkland layout in Picardy. The opening hole is a downhill par 5 where big hitters can reach the green in two. From the 10th green, you can spot the Amiens Cathedral, the largest Gothic cathedral in France and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The club also has a proud social legacy: three members founded Handigolf France here in 1993, opening competitive golf to disabled players across the country.
But it’s that sightline from the 16th hole that lingers. The memorial’s tower was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled by King George VI in 1938. When you look up from your scorecard and see it catching the late afternoon light, you’re reminded exactly where you are, and why this tour exists.
Fairways & Frontlines plays Golf Club d’Amiens during the Somme heritage day, followed by visits to Villers-Bretonneux and Le Hamel.