New 10-hole wildlife-themed crazy golf course open at Northcliffe Holiday Park, near Whitby

The initial plan was to develop a golf course to provide an extra facility for caravan owners and holiday hire accommodation customers at Northcliffe and Seaview Holiday Parks .

But the facility is now available for the local community and general public.

Andy Martin, who runs Northcliffe and Seaview Holiday Parks with his wife Sophie, said: “Because nature plays a big role in why many people visit these parks, five years ago we developed a wildlife walk to help our holiday park customers engage with the wildlife and scenery all around them.

“We are very lucky to be surrounded by some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the UK.

“We wanted to offer a chance for our customers to discover more about the flora and fauna in this stunning part of the world.

“We developed a trail with 10 informative boards, which describe different species of insects, birds, creatures, plants, habitats, etc, all of which can be found locally.

“We also created a number of fun worksheets and run annual competitions to coincide with the project, to try to get people young and old enjoying, understanding more of and caring for our natural surroundings.

“Therefore, when we started making plans to create our crazy golf course, we thought it would be perfect to link it in with our love of nature and wildlife and create a 10-hole crazy golf course based on our wildlife boards.”

They wrote to all the Whitby area primary schools asking the children to come up with names for the course.

“We explained the background about the Wildlife Boards around the parks and how we had developed the golf course based on that,” said Andy.

“Woody is the little character that is used on the Wildlife Board.

"We didn’t get entries from all the schools, but the ones we did became part of the selection process.

“All of the team here at Northcliffe voted for their favourite, as well as second and third favourite.”

The name with the most votes won and this was from four-year-old Lucas Leighton of Airy Hill School, who came up with the name Woody’s Wildlife Wondercourse.

Second place was 10 year old Aysha from Fylingdales with Crazy Coastal Golf and third was seven-year-old Sienna from East Whitby, with Habitat Holes’

“We invited Lucas and his family to open the course and have the first game, followed by a drink and snack from our on-site Coast Café Bar.

Sienna and Aysha were invited at the same time,” said Sophie.

The plan is to also have Lucas’s class in the new school term visit for a class trip.

As well as the hard work from the parks team, a number of businesses helped develop and compete the course: Urban Crazy, SD Signs, North York Moors National Parks, Wilf Noble Construction, Carvings by Steve Iredale, Martyn Cana Building, BHD Partnership, Jack Barber, Jet Print.