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My Scotland Adventure

I am finally coming back down to earth after my two week trip to Scotland. And I don’t like it.

My brother and I had two unbelievable weeks in the home of golf and being back in the real world isn’t cutting it. Frankly…it sucks.

But I have figured out Flickr and have started to upload some pics and videos there so I can share our trip with my readers. Click here for my Flickr Pics.DSC00528

We spent a week in St. Andrews and then a week up north in Dornoch and played as much golf as our old legs would let us. We managed fourteen rounds of golf in thirteen days and get this…only nine holes were in the rain.

That famous Scottish weather of rain, cold and wind never materialized for us during our entire trip. Our last nine holes of thirty six in one day at Royal Dornoch were played in a late afternoon rain. A small price to pay for an otherwise amazingly dry trip.

Our first week was spent in St. Andrews with an address a long par three from the Royal and Ancient. We landed on Saturday and after settling in we set about checking out the links, had a lunch at The Dunvegan, got a bottle of Benromach 15 (a new one for us) and had a light dinner and drinks at The Jigger Inn…not a bad day at all.

Then on Sunday morning we hit the Jubilee Course.

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It was a bit surreal as we just shouldered our bags and walked out the door and down the block to the starters hut. As we walked were were joined by others heading down to the courses and it just seemed so natural.

St. Andrews is a busy place, on and off the course, filled with golfers, tourists, students, townspeople and all those people servicing the thousands of daily visitors.

But at 6:30 in the morning there were only golfers around. We were lucky to visit with Andy, the Jubilee Course starter and he put us out well before our tee time as the first pair on the course.

So my brother George and I are standing on the tee, amazed that we finally got there and astounded that we would have the course to ourselves.

It was a bit overcast to start and a little cool, my kind of weather, and we were able to enjoy the course at our own pace. And it was a great course to start on, right next to the beach and the water in full view.

Golf on the links of St. Andrews is normally a congested matter. With three courses jammed in tightly but that morning was rather quiet and it couldn’t have been a better start to our golf. Of course big brother beat me that day but that would soon change.

That afternoon we headed up to Perth in our Audi super charged turbo diesel, which my brother drove like he was James Bond to catch a little local flavor at a Highland Games.

It looked like the entire town was there with everyone taking part in either the games, the piping, the dancing or the drinking. We opted to watch and have a drink, of course.

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There was such a sense of community during the entire time we were there. It was fun and gave us a real taste of Scotland that we wouldn’t find on the golf course.

The lottery for the Old Course failed us on Monday so we headed down the coast to the lovely and historic Crail Links.

They’ve been playing at Crail since 1786 and its the seventh oldest club in the world. Old Tom Morris designed the Balcomie Course in 1895 and we loved every inch of it.

The course was fun and quirky and linksy and right on the water. In fact the fifth hole, Hell’s Hole requires a shot over the water/beach/rocks, I made a contribution to the beach but it was all great fun.

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We loved it all as we played in bright sun, warm temps and the members treated us wonderfully. Graeme, the professional was so accommodating and kind it’s easy to see why he has been there for thirty years.

Crail is a great place and any visitor to the St. Andrews area has to put in on their list.  And I broke through for my first win as we were playing match play and I beat George 1 up.

We had a great start to our Scotland adventure and I had to keep telling myself that, “no, it wasn’t a dream. You are playing golf in Scotland.”

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