Show me 500 miles of the UK’s most stunning scenery, isolated utopias and golf courses and I’ll give you three weeks of worshipping the game on revered links and little-known wonderlands, and discovering the heart of golf.
The North Coast 500 (NC500) was launched in 2015, a driving route around the Scottish Highlands which starts in Inverness, heads north to John O’Groats, then 90 miles west to Durness and Cape Wrath, south to Applecross and finally east, back to Inverness. There’s no two-shot penalty if you choose to do it in reverse.
When I heard about the route I opened a map – an actual map, not an app – and noted the small red flags dotted along the way. In all, there were 27, including Royal Dornoch. Digging a little deeper revealed a rich history, the names of Old Tom Morris, James Braid and Donald Ross raising the stakes considerably. I saw a golf odyssey in my future, an adventure unlike anything I had undertaken since my 2008 campervan tour of Ireland.
A few weeks later I drove north on a quest to play those 27 courses in 19 days, visit any number of distilleries along the way and experience a Scottish landscape brimming with mystery and romance. The Highlands are crammed with mountains, valleys, beaches, bays, castles and dunes. The Scots have been playing golf in those dunes for centuries and it was time for me to join them.
The journey north
My starting point was Inverness, on the Moray Firth, the region’s capital city and the gateway to the Highlands. I played the parklands of Inverness and Strathpeffer, with the latter claiming the steepest descent of any 1st hole in Scotland, and the former being the first of six James Braid courses along the route. The colourful Muir of Ord followed, another Braid contribution with a train track cutting through the middle of its heathland holes. The 4th and 15th greens sit on opposite sides of the track which also happens to divide the original nine and Braid’s new nine, which opened in 1927.
A few years later he returned to Fortrose & Rosemarkie (F&R), just 20 miles east, redesigning the world’s 15th oldest course on Chanonry Point. There is a unique charm to a course where the sea (Moray Firth) is never more than a pitching wedge away… although in the wind you never know how far your wedge might travel. For golfers, the lighthouse at the end is like a magnet drawing you in; for others, the possibility of dolphins riding the waves sees visitors coming from near and far as the road to the lighthouse slices the links in two.
Golf in the Highlands was an education although not the one you’d immediately assume. It took only a few days of travelling for my blinkered view of parkland golf to be peeled away. At Alness, 20 miles north of Inverness, an early morning visit revealed a pretty and unassuming parkland. The leaves in the trees were turning to gold as autumn chased north through the hills and the colour fitted the mood of the course perfectly. There is no fuss to it, just honest, fulfilling golf and a lot of fun packed into a par 67.
Tain Golf Club, just like Golspie, found a special place in my heart. I love links golf and Tain comes with the accolade of being Old Tom’s most northerly design. The course is found down a maze of the small town’s backstreets, and much of his course remains to this day. Indeed, the recent clearance of broom and gorse has opened the course up, showing it much as it would have appeared when Old Tom first finished his work. It is crumpled terrain – the 2nd is a constantly shifting beauty, introducing a stream, while the famous ‘Alps’ 11th swings out to the Firth, where two large, almost symmetrical dunes hide the green completely – and the grasses glow everywhere.
At Tain, I also rediscovered the speed at which golf should be played. Playing on my own, I finished in 2½ hours, never losing the three-ball behind me. They were waiting for me to leave the 18th green. I imagine sponsors and TV stations would be infuriated if the professional game were ever to achieve such speeds, but what a breath of fresh air for the amateur game.
Expected highlights; unexpected delights
This east coast possesses a rich vein of links quality, starting at F&R and stretching north to Wick. Just as rich are the whisky distilleries which come thick and fast. Immediately outside Tain, and before you cross the Dornoch Firth, you can visit the Glenmorangie distillery for a tour. It is a tourist distraction from the golf but I had some insider information: there was another distillery, less well known and further off the beaten track that would, I was told, be a tastier affair. The Balblair distillery also happened to be close to Bonar Bridge’s sweet, moorland nine-hole course. Two birds, one stone.
F&R, Tain, the Carnegie Club (Skibo Castle), Royal Dornoch, Golspie, Brora and Wick form a 100-mile line so obvious that it is painting by numbers for six-year olds. Add in the nine-hole Tarbat for a touch of adventure and you could play golf here for eternity and never grow bored. Royal Dornoch was everything I dreamed it would be with greens floating above the land and captivating holes at every turn. The club will also open a vast new clubhouse in 2025, lifting its service offering to another level.
Golspie is bewitching, flipping easily from links to heathland and back again. I loved the easy transition and its Pebble Beach-like 16th… although I actually preferred the water-laced par-3 10th. North of beautiful, hypnotic Brora, where a calf had been born on the course only the day before, comes the forgotten child that is the little-known links (par 69) of Wick. Wick may not have the dramatic dunescape or impact as those to the south but this is an out-and-back links and a test of wind-whipped golf, dating back to 1790.
It is all fine and well to play only the links courses, such is their reputation and quality, but I mentioned an education and it is one worth celebrating. I come from a belt of parklands where conditioning has turned to manicured perfection. Any blade of grass out of place makes us tut with disapproval. We… I… have become spoilt by such presentation. During my run of links heading north, between Brora and Wick, I visited two nine-hole courses which changed my entire perception. A light bulb moment? Yes, quite probably.
Helmsdale was followed by Lybster, and others followed at Thurso, Ullapool and Lochcarron. Not one is smartly manicured and some may be mown only once a week and maintained by volunteers. In a village of just 850, the nine-hole Helmsdale demonstrates this perfectly as holes use the sloping terrain as obviously as possible. Golf’s essence in such communities is about togetherness and community spirit, not fuss and dollar signs. This, right here, is the heart of the game and something we should admire.
Discovering Durness
The same was true on the north coast at Reay Golf Club, designed by that man Braid, again. The rough, natural links fairways took me back to when I was a boy, trampling over similar fairways on a beat-up nine-hole course in Co. Cork … and loving every minute of it. It’s what makes golf so special.
It would be extremely unfair – especially to Durness, Reay, and Gairloch – to say the quality golf is limited to the east coast, but as I drove the northern coastline, the distances between golf courses grew and grew, while the roads got more and more narrow. There are but half a dozen courses on the north and west coast so the NC500 can’t seriously market itself as a golf route. Then again, golf is allowed to play second fiddle given the beauty on display. First came the beaches and the untouched dunes –where your desire to lay out your own personal golf course will be overwhelming – then came the mountains and the lakes and the peaks of Ben Loval and Ben Hiel, beyond Tongue. These peaks are said to have inspired Tolkien’s Mordor in Lord of the Rings, so sharp and jagged that even the clouds couldn’t hold on to them.
On the west coast there is the unspoilt beauty of Loch Maree and Torridon, where golfers are a rare breed and climbers, hikers and photographers dominate. The scale of everything is indescribable because this is a fantasy landscape. I admit to getting a touch lost in its beauty but then I had already been enchanted by Durness, where the north and west coasts collide. This cascading nine-hole links sits high above the sea and, appropriately, rather closer to heaven.
If ever beauty and golf deserved to be combined it is on the NC500. There are 500 miles to explore and serious questions to be answered: which is the best golf course (Royal Dornoch); which, my favourite (Royal Dornoch, Golspie, Brora, Durness); which was the most unexpected (Reay); which claims the title of ‘hidden gem’ (Durness); and where is the best distillery (Balblair). I spent 19 days discovering these answers but I uncovered a lot more, too. The beauty of the Highlands makes it easy to see why the North Coast 500 has been nominated as one of the best driving routes in the world, but it is also dripping in golf courses. You may not have a spare 19 days but you can still drive it in two or three and play some other-worldly golf. It is a journey you will never forget.
