AS I left Belfast I puzzled over the collapse of my time table. I was due at Portrush at 10 a.m. and here I was 64 miles away. Nothing bad gone wrong, and according to the arrangements I had made I was well up to schedule. Then I remembered the previous night should have been spent in Port rush, and further, I remembered that the previous night would have been spent in Port rush if I had been left to my own devices.

Much the same thing was to happen in Galway, where indescribably evil influences got doggedly to work. Between Belfast and Port rush there is one of the best and straightest, roads in Ireland, and yet I was lost; in mountainous country before I had gone 40 miles.

Faster and faster I drove through winding lanes with a feeling of helplessness and despair. I saw what looked like a tarred road ahead, turned on to it, and there was a sign post, "Portrush 10 miles " Deluding nobody I said aloud, "Useful short cut," and soon I was approaching Port rush along the coast road by the side of the golf course. The road from Belfast enters Portrush nowhere near the coast.

At the golf club there was the secretary with the welcome which always proved of the greatest comfort after hours of being lost and wondering about telegrams, and impotent fury at my own partiality for the wrong road. We decided on a four ball - which included Mr Anthony Babington, the Northern Attorney General.

Port rush Golf Club you might describe as a triumph of Mr Babington over nature. Mainly on his initiative they have dug that course out of the solid earth. As we played he described the tasks that had confronted him, and spoke unhappily of the lack of rain. With a little rain, in the view of Mr Babington, Portrush would be one of the if not the best, course in Ireland, and certainly some of the fairways still are a little bare and sandy.

We came to the sixth hole, and scrambled heavily down the side of a chasm in front of the tee and up on to the fairway again. "We're going to have that filled up," said Mr Babington, "there's too much walking on this course." I looked at the abyss not quite as deep as the Glen of the Downs, but if it was suddenly decided to move the whole golf course one mile to the south, Mr Babington probably would complete the job in, two or three days.

We came to the 15th. "In the Championship they said this was the only bad hole." I stared silently at the two huge sand traps, at the new turf over the positions they previously had occupied, and finally, in awe, at Mr Babington. See Portrush, I thought, and then go and have a good laugh at the Boulder Dam.

With a breeze off the sea the first five holes of this course would break your heart, nerve, and quite possibly an entire bag of golf clubs. The first tee is on top of a hill in the most exposed position possible, and to be compelled to strike a ball from this - in the direction of the infinitely distant pin, is an ordeal to which no man should be subjected. The hill extends about 50 yards from the tee, and then drops steeply to the fairway below. The best way to cover those vital 50 yards, I discovered, was to clutch the driver with the left hand in a grip that drained the blood from the knuckles, and let, everything go. It is difficult and painful to top with this vicelike left hand grip and, by the dispensation of providence, there is all the room in the world for a circular slice.

The second hole calls for wild work with a brassie on the second shot; the third hole is up to a plateau green, the fourth hole is more brassie work with the second and bunkers of impenetrable depth on the left of the green; the fifth is a short one to a green perched on the geometrical summit of a sugarloaf hill; at the sixth there is a bunker 240 yards on the left of the fairway - 15 yards of open space to the right and then an out of bounds. The green is placed between two more hills. Finally, at the seventh, you can try cutting off as much of a right hand dog leg as you, like, and lose your ball if the flesh is weak.

During the last championship the wind blew steadily in your teeth at all these holes, and this certainly must have been the reason for the rather disgusting popularity of the port of call at the ninth. The port of call is licensed, regardless of your golf, and it has a fire, armchairs and, a telephone. In September there was some danger of every match finishing at this point but, luckily, the huge crowds dissuaded the majority of the competitors.

After the ninth it is easier going until you come to Calamity Corner. Calamity Corner is a longish one shotter across the corner of a valley that must be fully 70 feet deep. There is room to the left, but most people go straight for the flag over the chasm, determined "to have, a stab at it" - one of the most unwise moves in the game of golf.

I ate my lunch in silent excitement. Soon I would be across the Border. There is something about the North of Ireland I find depressing. Perhaps the North is bare and cold; perhaps the land is too neatly cultivated; perhaps the roads are too uniformly excellent; perhaps the hedges are too tidily clipped. I was thinking of the wilderness of the Military Road, of the Sally Gap and Glenmalure; and curiously, I found something like it very soon. After, Londonderry the road began to climb to a bleak tableland, miles of bog planted with hundreds of thou-sands of young fir trees. The surface of the road became rough, the bends and switchbacks more acute - just, in fact, like home.

I passed across the Border with fantastic ease, and decided to stop at the next pot house, once again to hear my native tongue. A Dublin accent was too much to hope for, but surely something could be done in the way of a soft, rich brogue. "A pint of draught," I suggested, on tenterbooks. The lady drew it, and then opened her mouth. "Et's a lattle bat hay," said the lady. I drank the pint anyhow, and fled.

Surely the next village could provide what I wanted to hear. I swept into the square, and one old man, the only inhabitant, lifted an eyelid in resigned protest. There was less going on than you could imagine. I saw a hotel with a brilliant sign. There was a bicycle just perceptible - in the gloom of the hall, and no other sign of life. I kicked the bicycle, coughed, scraped my feet, and slammed the door twice. A figure five feet high, in an apion, appeared in the darkness at the head of the stairs. She must have been entering upon her 14th year. "Can I have a drink?" I asked, pretty sure of the answer.

"Is it water?" asked the lady. "I hadn't time to study her accent."

"No, it isn't water," I shouted back. It's a great big glass of very old, very fragrant, very powerful Irish whiskey, and where can I have it when you bring it in three seconds?" There was silence.

"This isn't a bar, please," said the lady. "Please" might have been a reproof or an apology and the accent might have been Belfast or Ballyhaunis. The mind is stunned when you find you can't have a drink in an Irish hotel.

I turned the fire engine, and with a bitter smile for the place that wasn't a bar, please, I hurried on towards Bundoran. As I drew up to the hotel I became painfully conscious of, the loss of my razor. It wasn't strictly a loss, since the razor had been left behind in the beginning, but the fact remained that I bore three days' unlovely growth. I can't remember why this discovery wasn't made earlier. Perhaps the Ritz Carlton Crillon atmosphere of the Great Northern Hotel made me think for the first time of my possible resemblance to the Pard.

(To Be Continued)