Lybster

Few places in Britain put you quite so far from the rest of the golfing world — and quite so close to the edge of it. Lybster sits in Caithness, the windswept northeastern tip of the Scottish mainland, where the land flattens into moorland and cliff before dropping into the North Sea. Golf here is as stripped-back and elemental as the landscape itself: no manicured resort frills, no grandstand architecture, just a small community club doing what Highland golf has always done — making the most of remarkable ground with minimal fuss.

With 18 holes playing to a par of 62, Lybster is a short course by any measure, but length is almost beside the point up here. Caithness wind can make any hole feel like a different proposition from one round to the next, and the sparse, open terrain offers nowhere to hide.

This is golf for its own sake, in a county where Wick and Reay are the nearest neighbours on a very thin fixture list. Visitors who make the journey — and it is a journey — tend to remember it.