Orkney

Few places on earth feel quite as remote as the Orkney Islands, an archipelago perched above the northern tip of Scotland where the Atlantic and North Sea collide. Golf here is an experience defined by raw, elemental landscape — treeless moorland, ancient standing stones visible from fairways, and skies that shift from brilliant clarity to brooding grey within the same round. Wind is not a variable here; it is the course.

Orkney Golf Club, set on the Mainland island near Kirkwall, is one of Britain's most northerly 18-hole courses. The layout plays across open, linksland-style terrain, and the modest par of 69 reflects a design that prizes positioning and shot-making over brute length. When the wind comes in off the sea — and it almost always does — scoring becomes a genuine test of patience and imagination.

Visiting Orkney to play golf means arriving for something larger than the round itself. The islands carry a Neolithic heritage unmatched almost anywhere in Europe, and a game here carries that same unhurried, ancient atmosphere.