Tag Archives: Wick

Golf in the Wild – Going Home – Reiss Links

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Chapter 4 – The Wick course follows a familiar links format: a north-heading outward eight hugging the landward side of the course, an east-facing ninth par 3 at its furthest reaches and a return nine running south and parallel to the mutinous sand dunes that divide the course from Sinclair’s Bay.  For those members or visitors short on time or energy there is a formally assessed 9-hole, par 35 course which goes north as far as hole five and returns to the clubhouse from holes fifteen through eighteen.
To play this nine is to tread similar ground to the original 9-hole course first established in 1870.
Succinctly named Angle, Cross, Long, End, Bent, Cable, Plain, Tower and Home, the poetry was reserved for the bunkers, not least the monstrous Hades which had to be negotiated from the second tee.
The July 1904 edition of Golf Illustrated describes it as a yawning sand bunker which necessitates a carry of about 140 yards. It is so close to the tee that there is no escape for a topped shot; in it must go, and the player who forgets that extrication is the first duty in a bunker and attempts the heroic is likely to regret his rashness. The carry is, of course, not too much for fair swiping, and once over, all that should remain is a careful approach.
Sadly, Hades is no more; at least not in this world. Also gone is a style of golf reportage that includes a fair swiping within its lexicon, even though it seems a more accurate description of my golf swing than any other I have heard.

Golf in the Wild – Going Home. Chapter 4 – Reiss Links

Golf in the Wild – Going Home – Further East

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Chapter 3: Among the Skerray headstones is this touching tribute to another George Mackay, erected by his friends in London. Enough is known about young George to imagine his last days …

It was early morning, 12 April 1912. The house was slowly coming to life, and George was wide awake. In fitful excitement, he had hardly slept. Some last tearful farewells to the early morning maids, a final check that his tickets were secure in his pocket and quietly he slipped the safe moorings of 11 Queens Gate, Kensington, and his life as a footman. Emerging from the colonnaded porch, he touched the iron railings one last time, turned left, and then right onto Prince Consort Road, heading for Waterloo and the 07:45 train to Southampton. He was dressed in his Sunday-best suit and wearing a Sunday smile. He did not look back. The city was already bustling with the clatter of hooves and the too familiar smell of horse manure, soon to be replaced by the salt sea air he had known as a boy.

The young George had only just turned twenty, but already he had travelled far from his humble beginnings on a croft near Tongue, in Sutherland. One of twelve children to William and Christina Mackay, he was determined to better himself. Too often he had heard tales of regret, of lives half-lived in the bitter north. George, the Heilam ferryman, spoke of nothing else but his plans as a young man to travel to Canada and how he was persuaded to stay by the Duke of Sutherland. This George would not make the same mistake.
The third-class boat train from Waterloo pulled into Southampton Docks at 09:30, stopping at Berth 43/44. Clutching a small brown suitcase and ticket 42795, George alighted into the dockside sheds, crossed the road, controlled by a man with a red flag, and momentarily stood, awestruck by the sheer overwhelming size of the ship. It was beyond anything he could have imagined. Nothing like this was ever seen in the Kyle.

As a third-class passenger, George had a simple berth, shared with six other passengers. Keen to escape the claustrophobia of steerage and the company of strangers, many of whom could not speak English, he quickly found his way to the open decks. He was there when the ship cast off and was towed into the River Test by tugboats, there for the near collision with USMS New York, there when Cherbourg appeared on the French coast and there when the ship set sail for Cobh in the dim light of an April evening. All the while he grasped ticket 42795. It had cost £7 11s, all his savings, but he was bound for Rochester and a new life in Detroit. Of one thing he was certain: he was never going home.

Golf in the Wild – Going Home.  Chapter 3 – Further East

Going Home – progress

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The text is finalised, the route set in stone, the website partially updated and the target for publication forecast as September 2021, to coincide with the Golf in the Wild Open at Allendale (date to be confirmed).  The journey is not quite as planned.  World events intervened, the Scottish border closed and the trip to Anstruther abandoned.  This is a major disappointment as it would sit nicely in the return journey and the setting for the course looks wonderful – see Anstruther Golf Club’s gallery.  Consequently, there is a journey of 108 miles between Blair Atholl and Lauder without a golf ball being struck – needs must.  Perhaps this is the basis for a trilogy – a return journey, playing all the good courses I missed the first time around:  Golf in the Wild, Going Back.  Will the Good Wife tolerate yet more golfing adventures, I wonder.

The Route Home

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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.