Links, lochs and Laphroaig

Ask knowledgeable golfers for three reasons to brave nature’s fury on Scotland’s ‘other’ coast, and they’ll likely offer Turnberry, Prestwick and Royal Troon. Fair enough, but make no mistake, in this part of the world, there’s a plenty of fun to be had outside the ‘top 30’.

This thought was uppermost when Alan Ramsay and I discussed our third golf trip together in the land of skirted men and haggis. The thing is, we’re both rather fond of a wee Scotch – preferably one that slaps you through the face with a smokey slab of sediment from an ancient Celtic bog – aka ‘heavily peated’.

There’s just one remedy for that – the island of Islay (pronounced eye-lah) and its seven famous malts, including my all-time favourite, Laphroaig. A quick squiz at a map confirmed that the Inner Hebrides islands are pretty remote and their golf courses extraordinary – a perfect recipe for adventure and, possibly, the ‘best golf trip ever’.

What I didn’t expect was to leave those weather-beaten shores with a more profound insight into the game of golf than I’ve ever gleaned from its birthplace on the shores of the Firth of Fourth or its legendary ‘home’ at St Andrews.

Scotland the brave

Our pilgrimage began in the tiny town of Black-waterfoot on the western shores of the Isle of Arran – known to locals as ‘Scotland in miniature’.

Think sweeping moorlands, wooded glens and tiny fishing villages. Arran even has its own version of Stonehenge – the Stone Circles at Machrie Moor. Your reward for hiking about two miles off the beaten track is a picture-postcard valley punctuated by three massive red sandstone pillars. The largest stands five metres tall – an ancient reminder of what people used to do for kicks in the pre-PlayStation period.

Alan wasn’t overly impressed – something about me dragging him halfway across the world to see a bunch of rocks when ‘there’s good whisky to be drunk’ – but whatever tartan blood flows through my veins was shaken and stirred by the ghosts of druids. We had to have a soundtrack. One pit stop in an unpronounceable village later, we had the pipes and drums of Scotland blaring out the stereo – and they carried on playing for the rest of the trip. Och aye, laddie!

Island-hopping on car ferries is exhilarating: the rumble of the turbines and the salt air in your face as a shoreline approaches.

I’ve never felt such anticipation – like modern-day explorers ready to claim new territories with 5-irons and ProV1s.

Arran is home to fine whisky, ales and more, but its place on the agenda was secured thanks to 12 holes of extreme links golf known simply as ‘Shiskine’. As always, we had consulted Allan Ferguson, author of Golf in Scotland, who advised us to find this quirky gem since it “sits atop the list among those (courses) played for pure fun” and he couldn’t be more spot-on.

‘Shiskine’

The opening holes are pretty straightforward, but after that, Shiskine takes a twist, asking you to find an absurdly elevated green with no more than a 9 iron in your hand and a single aiming pole stuck on top of the cliff that may or may not be of any use depending on the tee markers. For the rest, it’s a funfair ride including the completely blind par-three Himalaya that reads 162 metres and is played directly over a hill.
It incorporates a cunning system whereby you push a flag down on your way to the green – and then ‘pull’ it up again with a remote lever on the other side as you walk off to the next tee, alerting those behind that you’re off the green. I don’t know which was more scary – the hole itself or the fact that it required such innovative engineering.
Finishing off on the 12th (no, there’s no real reason, that’s just how many holes they decided to build), you’re left wondering what the heck just happened – and where can I get a drink?

To answer the first, play the course a second time. And as for the second, well there’s another Shiskine quirk – it’s one of the few clubhouses in Scotland that doesn’t have a liquor licence.

As we settled into the bar at the nearby Kinloch Hotel on the edge of the water, our home for the night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere out there in the shaggy maze of Shiskine, I’d heard the opening notes of a song about luck versus skill – about the origins of the game and the true nature of golf.

The course seems to have happened, almost by chance – perhaps even by mistake?

Picture 1

The Machrie on Islay – blind holes, white aiming poles and a sea of tangleweed!

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The 12th hole course at Shiskine hangs off the rocky coastline of Blackwaterfoot. Crazy golf - but loads of fun.

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Alan of Arran! The stone circle on Machrie Moor is awe-inspiring – if you like that kind of thing!

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Travel by car ferry is the only practical way to get around this part of the world – and certainly adds to the adventure.

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The 3rd hole at Shiskine, ‘Crows Nest’. It’s 128 metres from the back and you have to find a green about 30 metres above you. Just don’t aim for the flag – it’s only there as a means of letting the guys behind know that you’ve finished the hole. And the aiming pole? It’s not much use either, mate.

Oh, Mull of Kintyre

Beautiful though Arran is, unlike its neighbour, it never inspired a Beatle to put finger to fret. We ferried from Lochranza to a worryingly simple concrete slipway at Clonaig on the Kintyre peninsula, plugged ‘Campbeltown’ into the trusty GPS and took the eastern road down to the tip of the peninsula.

It was a good choice – a twisting, turning, single-track path for much of its way, with occasional pullover areas for passing, but awesome views. Almost tropical in its vegetation, complete with Kodak moments across the Kilbrannan Sound back towards Arran, the craggy lochland does for the Scottish soul what the Cape’s West Coast does to those of us with Afrikaner heritage.

Campbeltown is a humble village that still seems to be recovering from the potato famine – but it is close to one of Scotland’s legendary links. The Kintyre Golf Club was originally laid out by nature in 1876 and later fiddled with by Old Tom Morris.

The members quickly, and rightly, felt that ‘Kintyre’ was a bit bland for their ‘special’ links and so, in 1888, they renamed this gorgeous tract of duneland ‘Machrihanish’. There are two things you’ll often hear about this course: it has one of the finest opening holes and one of the best front nines in golf. I’d have to agree.

Kintyre Golf Club

It all begins with ‘Battery’, a 380-metre-long par four played into whatever wind is howling, from an elevated tee-box next to the pro shop, to a fairway that curves right to left as it hugs the shore. From the back and middle tees, you drive straight out over the Atlantic, deciding how much corner to cut – and although the beach is in play, making solid contact off shells and pebbles is hardly an ideal way to start the day.

If you survive, the next eight offer little respite – blind shots, elephants of all sizes buried beneath the fairways and extraordinary green complexes, some in hollows, some impossibly angled and others raised up on top of flattened dune tops. In many ways, the ‘front nine’ fame is unfair.

Sure, these holes are actually in the dunes whereas the back nine ‘opens up’ a bit, but you’d have to be cynical to find fault with any of them. And just when you think the torment is over, you hit the back-to-back shorts of 15 and 16 – the Hut and Rorke’s Drift respectively.

At just 150 metres, the former is protected by a wicked green, but with just three holes left to play and a score to protect, facing a 210-metre-long Boer battlefield, into the teeth of a gale, epitomises the character of this magical course.

The same could be said for the quaint little clubhouse that looks out onto the ocean and a row of once derelict old houses. Recently, they’ve been kitted out in style thanks to investment in the area by an American concern – who are not only promising to add much-needed muscle to the area, but are also responsible for the Machrihanish Dunes development a short way up the coast.

It is destined to be remembered for more brutal reasons than its sublime old relative. Designed by David McLay Kidd (who reworked Fancourt Montagu), the course is laid out on a site of special scientific interest, so they were restricted with the amount of fairway they could cut and that, together with a penal modern design ethic on the green complexes, makes for a stiff challenge.

The result is an authentic links – the first to be ‘uncovered’ on the west coast of Scotland in over 100 years – with six greens and five tee-boxes perched on the water’s edge. The locals grumble into whisky tumblers about the evil march of progress ruining the legacy of Machrihanish, but, selfishly, we reckon giving golfers even more reason to visit this special place is surely a good thing.

After a day so rich in heritage, there was only one thing to do: order a plate of deep-fried haggis back at home base. There’s a charming old-world eccentricity about the Ardshiel Hotel and since its pub was proudly voted the best whisky bar in Scotland last year, Alan and I felt it our journalistic duty to ‘research’ the facility.

Before leaving Kintyre, I needed to see what Paul McCartney was on about back in 1977, so I headed for the famous Mull. After numerous encounters with sheep on an extraordinarily narrow single-track road, I popped up on the coast and made my way in pouring rain to a clifftop adorned with a small white lighthouse. The Antrim coast of Northern Ireland is only 30 kilometres away so although it’s not a life-changing experience, if you want to be able to tell your friends that you have stood on one of only two places in Britain where you can see Britain and Ireland simultaneously (the other is the Isle of Man), it’s worth the trip.

We left Kintyre via the west coast road – a far more ‘modern’ experience with views out to the islands of Gigha, Jura and Islay and is traversed by a high-quality trunk road. Still, the Scottish spirit abounds and as you pass through villages with names like Crossaig, Grogport and Ugadale, you know you are in a country where they might speak the English language, but often in a way that’s nigh impossible to understand.

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Battery, the opening hole at Machrihanish, is as good as it gets – just clear the Atlantic and you’re away!

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The view from the Machrihanish clubhouse is typical of ‘old Scotland’ – that’s the main road into town separating you from the course.

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Controversial perhaps, but at least the new Machrihanish Dunes course has stayed true to the spirit of true links courses.

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‘Beaching’ at Clonaig is fairly dramatic for the uninitiated – we’re still not sure how they kept the ferry steady without actually mooring it to anything!

Islay – the promised land

Hopping from mainland to Arran to Kintyre was brilliant, but merely a warm-up for the headline act of our travel ‘gymnastics’ – Islay.

Known as ‘Queen of the Hebrides’, it’s a big island by local standards, but its 620 square kilometres makes it marginally larger than the Pilanesberg game reserve. And it was the southern shores that had tugged at our heartstrings from 10 000 kilometres away.

Down there, near the town of Port Ellen that lives and breathes under a blanket of malting hops from the local factory, is where three of the world’s most famous whiskies are born – and where you’ll find one of the most bizarre and remarkable golf courses on the planet.

For those not in the know, Scotch whisky gets its distinctive flavour from peat – the malted grains used to make the liquid gold are dried in kilns fired with partially decayed matter dug out from old bogs. It results in smoky, nutty, sometimes medicinal flavours and adds greatly to the chemical complexity of the alcohols that are carefully primed from malty juices distilled in vast copper cauldrons.

Newcomers will be met with Islay’s oldest bar joke: “Ya better drink up, laddie, while you can – we’re going to run out of peat soon.”
“Really?”
“Och, aye – the scientists reckon there’s only 1 200 years worth left!”

For a fan such as I, catching site of the classic white building of Laphroaig with its black roof and trademark pagoda-style kiln chimney brought a tear to the eye.
As for the distillery name emblazoned in huge letters on the sea-facing wall of the main buildings like massive billboards for passing nautical traffic – let’s not go there.
You enter the place enveloped in a fog of peat – every nook and cranny impregnated with its smoky perfume – and you leave with the flavour deep in your pores, as if you’ve been locked in a sauna of the world’s finest single malts.

Having been ‘home’ to Laphroaig, I thought that the rest of the distilleries might be a let-down – not so. It’s only by tasting that you realise how varied and fascinating the world of whisky can be.

Despite the fact that they draw the water for their whisky from three totally separate sources, the ‘big three’ of Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg lie within spitting distance of one another. And I’ll bet that when he first arrived on Islay in 1891, course designer Willie Campbell, did exactly what we did and got stuck into some serious tasting. It’s a possible explanation for what he ended up doing with the stunning piece of land we know today as the Machrie.

In this remote area of an even more remote Scottish isle, the 275-year-old Machrie Hotel holds court atop a hill overlooking Laggan Bay. It’s an architectural museum-piece crying out for a maintenance budget to restore what was once a family home, and a hotel since 1975, to its former glory.

But as many a traveller will tell you, it’s the engine that counts not the bodywork and in Machrie’s case, never were truer words spoken. The keeper of the inn, Ian Brown, could stand head to head with Basil Fawlty any day, marshalling his troops around with a calm, dry wit that would make for a truly hilarious reality TV show.

From the polish barman to the pretty, nationality-never-confirmed waitress, there is a consistency of catering excellence and bar-room conviviality found in this place that will make the worst round of golf soon forgotten. And believe me, at Machrie, that’s a distinct possibility.

Donald Steel was responsible for creating the full 18-hole layout as it now exists, but his work in the late ‘70s apparently respected the vision of Mr Campbell, so let’s just say they share the blame.

Machrie

You’d expect a course that runs to just over 5 700 metres to have some defences like, say, bunkers, but no, not here. Instead, they have removed the one thing that most of us rely on – our eyesight. In the first six holes, you are confronted by at least five blind drives – and four completely obscured greens.

Guess, hit, hope. It’s just a maze of little white sticks and crosses on hilltops that saves you from going backwards. The par-four 6th is masterful, complete with bell on the back of the green that is cunningly hidden in a punchbowl among the dunes – which those behind will hopefully discern as ‘theirs’ and not one of the others dotted on the dunes. I don’t know how many balls I lost getting to the 7th tee, but faced with two sets of tees that seemed pointed in different directions and more than one white stake on the ridge of the surrounding hill, I don’t think I’ve been more scared to hit a golf ball.

The back nine is equally visually impaired – a continuous assault on the senses and one’s sensibilities. The views are stunning, the rippling waist-high dune grasses intoxicating and the pure thrill of making your way around the heathery dunes, peatlands and reclaimed potato fields is quite simply unforgettable.

What a wild combination of feelings the place provokes: outrage at the capricious nature of the course, the unfairness of it all – and yet a sense of peace and tranquillity that you only experience when life is reduced to its most basic, pristine shell. In their marketing material, they say, “we like to think of the Machrie course as a subtle beast with a sense of humour”. Touché.

So remarkable was the experience that we played it every day – no matter how hard the wind or heavy the rain. And somewhere out there, lost in long grass, trying to shelter my camera from the elements, I looked out over a green, nestled in its bomb crater behind a huge green bank, completely hidden from view for those playing, and suddenly it all made sense.

This extreme layout pays homage to something that we’ve all forgotten – that when golf was first played, par was the last thing on anyone’s mind. The true spirit of our game was born in matchplay – one on one – where all that matters is beating your opponent, hole by hole. Medal – who cares?

And if you’re not in a match, then enjoy the thrill of the land; the elation of conquering the unknown; the rare pleasure of being tickled by lady luck just after she’s spanked you. Now imagine having that thought racing around your mind as you enjoy the warmth of the bar of the Machrie Hotel.

The innkeeper smiles knowingly at you as you try to explain your epiphany – and offers a wee dram of Laphroaig 16-year-old. And as its smoky warmth fills your soul, life suddenly seems so worth living.

Picture 10

Ah, the par-four 6th at Machrie. Believe it or not, this is the view looking back down the fairway.

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 The gorgeous old building of the Machrie Hotel doubles up as the clubhouse – one of the greatest ‘stay and play’ experiences in golf.

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The Machrie is the only course on Islay, but to be honest, you could play it 10 times and it would seem like a different course each day.

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Home at last! All Islay’s distilleries advertise themselves to the ocean.

Travel advisor

By Alan Ramsay

Getting there

We flew to London with British Airways which flies regularly ex Johannesburg and Cape Town daily. Compared to most international carriers, BA seems to have maintained a high standard and does its best to transport you in comfort – meals are as good as anyone else offers and the cabin crews are generally pleasant and well-trained.

Our internal flights were also on BA – the London Heathrow to Glasgow flight being just under 90 minutes. Be warned – leave plenty of time to negotiate the city that is Heathrow Airport – particularly terminal five. The online booking system at www.britishairways.com is easy to navigate. And be sure to ask about the possibility of a premium economy upgrade – if there are seats available, you can get lucky.

We stayed overnight in the relatively new Sofitel airport hotel at London Heathrow which proved to be one of the best ‘business’ hotels we’ve ever experienced. Conveniently located ‘in’ Terminal 5, it’s an ideal home for a night if your schedule requires. The rooms are large and excellently appointed, the restaurant and bar welcoming and the service from all staff, particularly the front desk, really made us feel that they cared – unusual these days in any hotel! Rates vary hugely so scour the web for the best deals.

Check out www.sofitel.com

’cross the water

If you’re headed for the Hebrides and beyond, Glasgow is a logical starting point. Rent a car and drive 45 minutes on the A737 through rolling farmlands to the ferry port, Ardrossan, where the adventure starts with the one-hour crossing to Brodick on Arran.

Local travel by Calmac ferry (Caledonian MacBrayne – www.calmac.co.uk) on the west coast of Scotland is easier – and more entertaining – than travel by local train in South Africa! Tariffs are more than reasonable: four crossings, ranging from under an hour to over two hours, cost under £200 for a car and two passengers thanks to Island Rover and Island Hopscotch multi-destination, multi-day tickets. Advance reservations advisable.

Kintyre

A short drive up the Arran coast brings you to Lochranza where the ferry crosses to Kintyre, beaching at Claonaig. The road system on the peninsula is simple: the B842 is an attractive single-track road for 28km of the 48km all the way down the east coast to Campbeltown – and the A83 goes down the west coast.

The two meet in two places 50km apart, in Campbeltown in southern Kintyre and again 8km south of Tarbert in the north. No roads cross the peninsula between those two points, leaving its interior one of the most remote in Scotland.

On the B842, don’t miss the Cubra bar in the hotel at Carradale or a round of golf on the nine-hole course behind the hotel. Campbeltown itself, set at the head of a deep loch, is one of the largest towns in Argyll. It’s a perfect base for exploring the area, notably the two Machrihanish golf courses, old and new (which are some 15km away), the local Springbank whisky distilleries, the attractive fishing harbour and great surrounding scenery for hiking and motoring.

For accommodation, look no further than the three-star Ardshiel Hotel, owned and run for the last three years by two financial-services industry ‘escapees’, Flora Grant and Marion MacKinnon. As mentioned, their pub was acclaimed by Dram magazine as having Scotland’s ‘Whisky Bar of the Year’!

“We particularly want to target whisky and golf tourists, hence the reason why we also have a good variety of local ales, enabling us to offer a real ‘taste of Scotland’”, Flora told Compleat Golfer. Room rates vary from £65-75 for a single and £80-100 for a double, depending on seasons, while a typical meal including wine costs £30-40 per person. www.ardshiel.co.uk

Make Machrihanish GC (www.machgolf.com) and the new Machrihanish Dunes (www.machrihanishdunes.com) your priority. The latter’s summertime greenfees of £89 compares with old Machrihanish’s £63, so some visitors might choose to buy a day ticket to play two rounds at the old course. Both courses offer special packages, especially in the off-season, so check their websites.

Apart from Machrihanish, there are other nearby courses that make a golf tour of the Kintyre peninsula such a pleasure – notably Dunaverty, Carradale and Tarbert. For the truly adventurous, reachable via a 20-minute ferry ride from Tayinloan on Kintyre’s west coast, is Gigha – a nine-hole course located on the stunning Island of Gigha – translation ‘God’s Isle’ and just 11km long and 2km wide. We were gutted that the schedule didn’t allow a visit. Greenfees are just £10.

Visit www.kintyregolf.com

Islay

Near Tarbert on Kintyre is the Kennacraig ferry terminal – a bouncing board to Islay. Choose between a two-hour voyage to Port Askaig or a two-and-a-half-hour voyage to Port Ellen in the south, close to the island’s only golf course, Machrie.

Islay has just 3 200 inhabitants, covers 600 square kilometres, and has an impressive 220km of coastline. It has eight working distilleries, making the whisky industry one of the most important sources of income. Famous names like Bruichladdich, Bowmore, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Caol Ila, Bunnahabhain and Ardbeg are well established, while Kilchoman is the newest and smallest.

Distilleries aside, tourists visit for the wildlife and spectacular scenery – and bird-watching is popular throughout the year because of the large flocks of wild geese which visit every winter (October to May) and a variety of rare birds such as the corncrake and the chough. And, clearly, the hiking opportunities for non-golfers are immense.

Whisky: We recommend that you do the full tour and tasting at Laphroaig, not forgetting to sign up in advance of your trip to join the ‘Friends of Laphroaig’ and receive ‘ownership’ of one square foot of land beside the distillery (www.laphroaig.com).
Take in the tour of Lagavulin, followed by lunch in the excellent Ardbeg restaurant. On another day, take the 40-minute drive north to Bowmore and a little further around Loch Indaal to Bruichladdich. We also discovered a micro-brewery in Bridgend, Islay Ales, that’s well worth a visit!

Machrie: For maximum value, check in at the Machrie Hotel (www.machrie.com) for three nights, allowing at least two rounds of golf and time to visit the distilleries. Sixteen comfortable rooms and 15 self-catering lodges under the management of Ian Brown (pictured above left) who has been ‘mine host’ for more than a decade, come at rates starting at £60 per person sharing for the rooms and £148 per lodge (two twin bedrooms). Off-peak seasonal golf packages (three nights, dinner, bed and breakfast and unlimited golf) start at £390 – good value by anybody’s standards.

Alternatively, B&Bs and hotels abound on Islay – in Bowmore, The Lochside Hotel and Duffie’s Bar offer a seaside setting and yet another excellent restaurant starting at £55 per person, B&B (www.lochsidehotel.co.uk).

Returning: The ferry will take you back to Kennacraig on the Kintyre peninsula, from where there is a pleasant drive along several lochs on high-quality freeways to Glasgow or elsewhere in Scotland, a country that offers many attractions close to a typical South African’s heart: good people, good golf, good food and good drinking.
It is a ‘bucket list’ adventure!

General Tips

How long: A full week – the likes of Shiskine, Machrihanish and Machrie deserve more than one round.

When to go: The ‘islands’ are so remote that, even in July, we did not run into congestion. Autumn is a good time to travel and remember that some distilleries close in July – for maintenance.

A good map of Scotland is vital – and a GPS is invaluable. Find yourself a copy of Golf in Scotland by Allan McAllister Ferguson – approx. $25 – www.fergusongolf.com. It has been, and remains, our bible for planning a golf trip to Scotland.

British Airways charges £40 for a second bag, even a golf bag, irrespective of weight – unlike airlines such as Air France and KLM that purposely do not charge for golf bags. You could strap your bags together but it might be impractical! Whichever airline you choose, access its website to book your seat in advance – economy-class centre seats are miserably cramped.

Fly-in and rent-a-car options can be considered for golf at both Machrihanish and Machrie, while Machrie offers a shuttle service (40 percent of its guests fly in).
If you go the car-rental route, a 16-day hire of an Avis VW Golf cost approximately R8 000. Just be advised to double-check the agreement and charges when collecting the car – to avoid hassles.

Useful websites:

• visitscotland.com
• eatscotland.com
• undiscoveredscotland.co.uk