Fairways to heaven

Yes, Wales can be stunningly beautiful but it is green for a reason. Only the other week I witnessed an almost biblical scene of sodden, muddied souls trying to leave the Green Man

It also led to us turning up at the four-star St Pierre Golf and Country Club near Chepstow looking more like something the cat dragged in than someone with golfing aspirations.

I'd made this Welsh escape as the principality was gearing up for this weekend's Ryder Cup, the biennial US-Europe golf clash being hosted for the first time in Wales. Music festivals and golf aren't the most obvious bedfellows — but I had to get the clubs into the camper van.

Fortunately the staff at the Marriott St Pierre had better things to worry about than our post-festival appearance. Like many other hotels and B&Bs within a half-hour radius of Celtic Manor, near Newport — where the Ryder Cup starts on Friday — the St Pierre is cashing in on golf fever. Ryder Cup T-shirts, bags, caps, you name it, are everywhere. It's the same story down the coast, even at arguably Wales' best-known course, Royal Porthcawl, and the Nicklaus-designed Machynys.

St Pierre has two courses — the 6,787-yard Old Course, which was in excellent condition despite overnight downpours — and the shorter Mathern.

I'd heard much about the Old Course and its 18th hole, a 230-yard par three over a lake with a bunker-surrounded raised hole right in front of the ivy-clad hotel. When I played, an army of blazered schoolboys had just finished an England v Wales match. Fortunately my aim was true so no need for them to run for cover.

The 132-bedroom hotel has undergone a £5.5 million refurbishment and now offers a comfort and charm I wouldn't normally associate with Marriotts. The hotel centrepiece is a charming 14th-century manor house, next to which is a delightful Norman church often used for weddings.

Dinner in the Zest Lounge Bar and Eatery was suitably relaxed, the restaurant being the central meeting place for golfers and leisure club users alike. Being just a half-hour drive from Bristol, having a commuter-friendly leisure club — with its pool, gym, sauna, Jacuzzi — appears to be just as crucial to the Marriott business plan as the golf.

It was just the ticket after camping in the Brecon Beacons, with the help of our trusty VW camper van (for once, it didn't break down). As a festival site, I can't think of a more spectacular setting than under the mighty Sugar Loaf mountain, with the Black Mountains rolling away in the distance. Despite signs proclaiming "Croeso" ("welcome" in Welsh), this beautiful region didn't strike me as being particularly Welsh — you're on the Monmouthshire borders here, often thought of as being far too English.

Yet even here, a half-hour drive from Celtic Manor, they were getting in on the Ryder Cup act. Indeed, for the good folk of Abergavenny the golf could be the second jackpot in a matter of weeks. Its annual food festival each September, which this year attracted guests ranging from Aussie TV celebrity chef Bill Granger to chef Bruno Loubet (of Bistro Bruno Loubet, Clerkenwell), attracted 40,000 people, while the town's Angel Hotel, with its AA Rosette restaurant, sold out well in advance for the Ryder Cup weekend.

Even the site of the Green Man Festival itself, the Glanusk Estate, was trying to woo golf fans. I could see the appeal — after a day at the golf you retreat to a cottage with the river Usk running through the estate and teeming with trout and salmon (guests can have the services of a ghillie and a fly-fishing tutor). The fly fishing season ends in mid-October.

Glanusk has hosted Green Man for five years running but is still probably better known among the country set, hosting international horse trials and polo. It has been home to the Legge-Bourke family for years — Tiggy Legge-Bourke was in the spotlight many years ago as a former nanny to Princes William and Harry. Now a Pettifer, and with four children, she enjoys a lower-key existence