Since the Spanish tourism boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s the Costa Blanca has been popular with British holidaymakers.

In fact, over 70 per cent of foreign property owners in the region are English or German.

I should know, I’ve been lucky to use my father’s apartment in the town of Santa Pola, around 12 miles south of Alicante, since the early 1990s.

But I have rarely been adventurous – I’ve played golf in Alicante (as an expensive treat) and visited Benidorm, but done little else, other than chilled out. I’d certainly never considered visiting neighbouring Murcia, to which Jet2.com fly (as well as Alicante).

One of the first things I noticed on the way to La Torre golf resort was the endless fields of greenery – an unlikely sight in the dusty, red Spain known to most of us.

I was in the fertile flatlands known as the Huerta, and if you check your packet of vegetables in the freezer at home, the likelihood is that they were plucked from there.

The purpose of my visit was to check out this part of the rapidly-expanding Nicklaus Golf Trail. With three 18-hole courses open, plus a nine-hole course extending to 18 this autumn, this is already the largest collection of Nicklaus courses in Europe – another two courses will open at the end of this year close by.

I love playing golf on holiday, but have often found it expensive – my abiding memory of Cancun, Mexico, was sitting at my hotel overlooking a golf course with nobody playing on it.

My wife even said I could ‘break the bank’ and pay the £150-plus it would cost (with club hire and other accessories) but I demurred. I’ve lived in Yorkshire too long for that sort of largesse.

All courses on the Nicklaus Golf Trail are linked by free shuttle buses, and all are available to play for La Torre holidaymakers. Each course is of intriguingly-different design, and it is simple to arrange a week’s golf in one phone call.

For golfing virgins who want to try the sport, a team of professional coaches are on hand to tutor novices of all ages, offering either one-to-one or group sessions. Or players can improve their handicap with some private tuition.

The courses are great value and, for a poor golfer such as myself (there was never any doubt from a young age which Paul McGinley was going to hole the winning putt for the Ryder Cup), I enjoyed the experience without being intimidated by the course (although there was a lot of sand and water at La Torre – my dad calls me the diviner for my ability to find water on a golf course).

Another ideal for the holidaymaker is the variety of property available at La Torre, which is owned by Polaris World. From the television adverts, I always assumed Polaris was simply a property seller, to be avoided at all costs because of the hard-sell factor.

The truth is, in fact, the opposite – they have a wide variety of property for rent or sale on the site which should suit every pocket – from apartments, townhouses and villas up to three bedrooms. If you also factor in the Intercontinental hotel franchise, golf on the continent has never been so accessible to the public.

It’s also designed well. It was difficult not to take a deep breath at the ninth when the ‘cityscape’ aspect of the buildings surrounding the course was pointed out to me. There are also a variety of on-site restaurants – the Gingko Club Asian restaurant, La Vinoteca tapas restaurant and Mediterranean cuisine, El Limonero, serving a range of Murcian dishes and paellas and the Al Fresco Bar and Grill serving salads and light snacks. Outside the hotel, there is an Irish pub and the bamboo chill-out bar with its own lakeside sun terrace.

With so much to offer, it is tempting to stay on the resort and the golf courses – but that would be a mistake, as there are centuries of history just a few minutes away in the Roman town of Cartagena – from where Hannibal set off across the Alps to Rome – and in the narrow streets of Murcia city.

Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon, the Mar Menor, is also just a shuttle ride away. And if you do feel the need for sea, the perfect smooth sand and gorgeously warm and blue Mediterranean is always only a ten-minute drive away.

As well as La Torre, Polaris runs resorts at Mar Menor, El Valle and Hacienda with more planned, despite the global credit crunch.

And what really added to my holiday experience was the car hire – the first time I’ve rented a vehicle abroad. We used Goldcar rentals and were given a diesel Citroen Berlingo with a full tank of fuel. We didn’t have to put any extra diesel in it during our break, which included at least five days out, and it was very simple to collect and drop-off, with no hidden extras.