A great trip, so some final thoughts before resuming regularly scheduled programming.
Head of Craig - On Sunday, our last full day in country, we played the Craighead, Crail Golfing Society's second course, though in our opinion second only chronologically. The course was designed in the late 1990's by Gil Hanse before he was, you know, Gil Hanse,
It will be considered blasphemous in certain circles, but I liked it as much as it's older sibling. As with Gil's design at castle Stuart, it features wide playing corridors, not a bad thing since we played it in some of the strongest wind we had on the trip. Gil was given an equally beautiful canvas with which to work, and one can't but envy the club members having two such interesting tracks with which to amuse themselves.
The day started with a misfire on my part, as we needlessly rushed to make a tee time that turned out
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| Graeme Lennie |
to be 40 minutes later than I thought. That worked out fine, however, as it gave me time for a good long chat with Crail's longtime head professional, Graeme Lennie. You may recall that Theresa had Graeme's son as her caddie on the Balcomie, and Graeme is coming stateside for a golf trip with his buddy Gil Hanse. I did kindly offer that if they were desperate to fill out their fourball at Pine Valley, I'd see if I could fit it in. But Graeme knows everybody in the game and our discussion covered the recently-deceased Jim Finnegan, as well as favorites George Pepper, Mike Bamberger and John Garrity.
The other act of provenance was that our caddies were both named Jim. I did some quick math and calculated that, given our deteriorating mental acuity, that gave us a 50% chance of remembering at least one of their names.... But they were both delightful company, not that there's anything newsworthy in that. And they both took to our match and associated trash talking with gusto...
The course has a heathland feel and look to it in spots:
And some trees ring a section of the property:
But in other spots it's oozing with linksy goodness:
The most unusual feature was on the 11th hole, where this sign greet you on the tee:
There was an old stone wall there bisecting the fairway, and Gil just left it there. It's only 3 1/2-4 foot high, but one does need to control one's distance to leave room to clear it.
Theresa played quite well, even taunting me by balancing her golf ball on her cap:
Theresa made a clutch up-and-in on the Par-3 17th to close me out 2&1, bringing the final tally of the trip to 5-3. She really found her form late in the trip, so it's fortunate that I built up a lead in the early days.
Sign O' The Times - If you were with me during my Ballyliffin blogging days, you might remember this post on signs that amused or intrigued me. This trip was not particularly fertile ground in that area, as this was pretty much the best I saw (in both cases the actual images are from Google searches), the first from South Uist:
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We crossed this bridge somewhere in the mid-section of the country.
I know, it used to be a respectable family blog, but now we're just going for click-bait.
The Good - The actual travel arrangements worked like a charm, and thank goodness for that. John had been quite concerned about the luggage situation on our puddle-jumper from Glasgow to Benbecula, as he's seen some ugly situations with passengers either not allowed to take their bags on or charged an exorbitant fee for doing so, in one case even for carry-ons. As I told my buddies before leaving, as long as all they want is my money I'll be happy... one of my favorite moments was when the Flybe gate agent told me with a crestfallen look on her face that she was sorry but would have to charge me ten quid for my second bag...well, if you have to. They'll never know how much money they left on the table...
The Very Good - The weather cooperated almost fully. Yes, we got pretty wet that first day at Askernish, but that was the only time we played in the rain. Most days the rain gear remained safely in the boot, and I played two rounds in shorts (and could have played others). We saw some hard and persistent rain, but fortunately that was only on our two travel days. We had what the bride has taken to calling "Scott Simpson weather."
The Better - In a word, Crail. Both the village and golf club were everything I contemplated in planning the trip, and being only ten miles from St. Andrews was just perfect. Those evening strolls to the harbor will stay with us for some time, and the village has Theresa second-guessing our long-term plan to spend a full season in Ballyliffin. We might have to try both...
The Best - Sharing the first half of our trip with the wonderful Elsie and John. And it would be thus even absent banoffee pie... They're just great friends with a sense of fun and adventure and sharing the Askernish journey with them was perfect.
It all came about without conscious effort from my end, but the result is that we visited a place renown for it's remoteness, and we got there with amazing ease. We're just damned lucky in that, so thank you to our friends.
The Mildly Disappointing - Because it's been such a wet summer in Scotland, the course were universally softer than ideal. I do like my links on the fiery side, but that's just the rub of the green.
The Bad - Not much to speak of, perhaps only an unfortunate lodging decision in Aberdeenshire, and even that might have been worth it for the brilliant morning and evening walks to the North Sea.
The Worst - Not much, though this was probably our worst trip as relates to dining. Despite it's reputation, we've always eaten quite well on our trips, especially enjoying the fresh seafood. I don't think this means much of anything, we just didn't find good options North of Aberdeen and our first night in Crail at the hotel across the street we did experience one pretty bad display of the culinary arts.
It should also be noted that after three nights of Elsie's home cooking, any food was going to be a disappointment.
Book Review - I often tie my reading to topical events, and I had been saving Kevin Cook's highly-
Now it didn't play out exactly as planned, as my blogging was so time-consuming that I didn't do much reading while there, and I would have been better served by having finished it before getting to St. Andrews. Instead I finished it on the flight home, teary-eyed as the various tragedies consume Old Tom. But if you've even a cursory interest in the history of our game, I think you'll enjoy it greatly. It's wonderfully evocative of a bygone time, but it's filled with larger-than-life characters and great vignettes. Give it a try, you'll thank me.
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