Stromness

Few settings in British golf are as dramatically remote as the Orkney Islands, where the North Atlantic and North Sea collide at the northwestern tip of mainland Scotland. Stromness Golf Club sits on this ancient archipelago, a place of treeless, wind-scoured moorland, enormous skies, and light that shifts constantly through the long northern summer days. Golf here is an exercise in reading the elements as much as the terrain.

With a par of 65, the course leans heavily on shorter holes, which in these conditions is no handicap — Orcadian winds can make a short iron feel like a driver decision. The layout rewards local knowledge, creativity, and ball control over raw power, and visitors who arrive expecting a conventional challenge tend to leave with a humbling and memorable re-education.

Stromness itself is one of Orkney's most characterful towns, a tight grid of flagstone streets running along the harbour, steeped in Norse heritage and maritime history. Playing golf here feels less like a round and more like a genuine encounter with a place most golfers will never otherwise reach.