Golspie

Few places in British golf feel quite as remote and elemental as the Sutherland coast, and Golspie Golf Club — founded in 1889 — is among the oldest and most characterful courses in the far north of Scotland. The layout occupies a stretch of duneland between the village and the Moray Firth, with Ben Bhraggie and its famous statue of the 1st Duke of Sutherland watching over play from the hillside above. This is links golf stripped to its essentials: gorse, marram grass, sea wind, and a firm, rumpled turf that rewards low, thinking golf rather than aerial power.

Golspie sits comfortably in that proud tradition of compact Highland links — par 70 rather than 72 — where the routing squeezes full drama out of a modest footprint. Exposed positions mean the wind is rarely the same direction twice, and what looks straightforward on a calm day becomes something else entirely when the firth is blowing.

The surrounding area is genuinely wild: red squirrels in the nearby woods, the ruins of Dunrobin Castle grounds just down the road, and an A9 journey north that thins the traffic considerably. Golspie rewards the golfer willing to make the trip.