Golf in the Wild – Going Home – Heading South

Chapter 5 – It is not clear how long golf was played across this testing terrain, but by December 1925 The Scotsman was reporting that Lybster Golf Club was seeking to re-establish the course at Black Park, as there had been for some time a strong desire to form a golf club for the use of the inhabitants and of summer visitors, and that, with that object, a sum of over £300, sufficient to meet the expenditure necessary to lay out a golf course, had been collected.

So once again golf would be played close to the steaming Coffee Pot, only this time it would be the railway that would eventually vacate the plot. Over time the course was reconfigured, such that the original clubhouse at the first green transferred to the old ticket office and the future of the building was guaranteed. Sadly, the platform is no more, but the stationmaster’s house remains, and as you play the top end of the course, you are traversing a cutting for the old line.

Golf in the Wild – Going Home. Chapter 5 – Heading South

 

The Route Home

The route for the first book determined itself.  The 9-hole courses on the Scottish northwest coast are limited so, it was a simple task of joining the dots from Lochcarron, northwards to Durness.  Returning south, beyond Perth, has been an altogether different proposition, there were simply so many choices.  In the end, it came down to expediency – I have been lingering in the north for too long and I need to get home.  There are fine 9-hole courses in the Scottish Borders I have played for years so, it seemed logical to return via familiar roads.  I then realised there was a direct connection between my final destinations and roads didn’t enter into it – the Lauder Light Railway, North British Railway, the Border Counties Railway and the Hexham & Allendale Branch Line.  I simply needed to board an imaginary train and I would be home, where ‘home’ is the old Allendale course at Thornley Gate.

Reproduced with the kind permission of John Alsop

Reproduced with the kind permission of John Alsop

Golf in the Wild – Going Home will visit the following courses, with many a diversion along the way:  Reay, Wick/Reiss Links, Lybster, Bonar Bridge, Portmahomack, Castlecraig (closed), Fortrose & Rosemarkie, Covesea, Cullen, Rothes, Blair Atholl, Lauder, Melrose, Newcastleton and Allendale (Thornley Gate).

The eagle-eyed will spot a few 18-hole courses among this selection.  In the case of the far north, this is simply because there are no 9-hole courses to play – and anyway, Reay and Reiss Links are suitably wild and simply superb.

The old course at Thornley Gate was only a half mile walk from the station, a good deal closer than the centre of Allendale after which the station was named (Catton would be more appropriate).  This was a problem repeated along many stretches of these old lines – stations sited too far from the communities they served.  When bus services were introduced, rail passenger numbers inevitably went into steep decline.