Do I put something about video in here?
The St Andrews, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns, Golf Vacation is operates a daily back-to-base model centred on the town itself. This is a low mileage trip and one where we might consider using a hired driver without notable detriment in the price
Post covid the St Andrews accommodation market has exploded. It’s recently overtaken Edinburgh as Scotland’s most expensive destination. I’m afraid this shows no sign of slowing down. If anything it look like continuing to get worse.
We might be including the cream of Fife and needing to accept some hefty green fees, but we’re also going to take a hit in the price of accommodation too for what could be a six or seven night stay (the final night at Carnoustie is possible)
The St Andrews, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns golf vacation is laid out as a seven night duration staying exclusively in the town of St Andrews throughout.
It’s perhaps worth noting that if we wanted to save a bit of money then we could stay the Sunday night at Carnoustie. This would allow the golfers to ‘walk off the 18th, and into the hotel’ upon finishing, but it would also add about 45 mins to the following mornings drive to Edinburgh Airport
It might look a little incongruous at face value, but we generate a lower mileage by going to Gleneagles first from Edinburgh Airport and then looping around to St Andrews, than if we’d tried to include for such time as we were based in St Andrews
At about 250 miles (100 of which would be ‘airport runs’). This is a very low mileage and low intensity transport burden. We have three courses which could easily be ‘walk out to play’ plus the Castle Course which is only 3 miles out of town.
In total, this should only require about 7 hrs of road time, which is an average of about 50 mins a day
We could give consideration to using a hired driver if our numbers allow it. The price of a hired-driver for the St Andrews, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns golf vacation isn’t likely to be significantly more expensive, but the Gleneagles day will drive that price a bit. If we were to omit Gleneagles (and there would be grounds for doing so) then the probability is that a hired driver for the duration would be a similar price
The St Andrews, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns golf vacation trip can support Luxury, Premier and Affordable options. It perhaps needs to be noted however that the description of ‘affordable’ in the context of St Andrews needs increasingly qualifying with the word ‘relatively’.
If we wished to explore the ‘affordable’ option, then an earlier enquiry and booking is strongly advised in the pursuit of securing somewhere in what is a fast vanishing sector
As ever, the scale of non-golf activity depends on whether we’re adding extra value for golfers, or building a stand alone proposal for non-golfers to run alongside a golf programme. The combinations are quite good
By placing Gleneagles on the day of arrival, the historic old city of Stirling lies in a line of travel and could be used as a point of interest enroute (dependent on our flight arrival time, and tee-time at Gleneagles)
St Andrews is a legitimate point of interest without golf. The ruined old castle and cathedral are natural focus points, whereas the town also possesses aesthetic charisma and history.
Outside of St Andrews, Edinburgh can be visited by train (75 mins) and it’s certainly worth trying to fit this in against our earliest morning tee-time to create the space for us
The East Neuk of Fife has a collection of charming fishing villages we can wander around at leisure on a gentle afternoon combined with Kingsbarns
Falkland Palace can be justified as well in conjunction with Dumbarnie
Finally, Glamis Castle combines well with Carnoustie
St Andrews Old Course asks for a handicap of 36. Unlike some courses who needn’t be rigid in enforcing their handicap thresholds, the St Andrews Links Trust will do. Failure to provide evidence will result in a refusal to allow us to play
The Old Course diary is available on-line to consult for availability and is dynamic in so much as it changes every season, although there are some known block outs that occur every year, notably the first week of May, the first week of June, and a run from early/ mid September to early/ mid October
There is no play on the Old Course on Sunday
Carnoustie asks for 28 (gentleman) and 36 (ladies). Whilst usually being open 7 days of the week, visitors will have to play afternoon tee-times at the weekend
With all the usual disclaimers of a lottery being random, and there being no such thing as a certainty etc plus the variable factor of availability for the specific week chosen, our prospects of winning a ballot on this programme would otherwise be considered very strong if we sought to use every opportunity to do so
We should be able to contest a total of six open ballots (Mon to Sat) and four ‘singles’ ballot (Weds to Sat), for a total of ten. At the time of writing, (early 2026), Faraway Fairways can’t recall ever seeing anyone fail on a 6/4 strategy
Green fees need paying in advance and are always non-refundable against a certain timeline
Green fees need paying in advance and are always non-refundable against a certain timeline
A St Andrews Old Course ballot is drawn 48 hrs before play, and we can safely assume that this is outside any refund window! Any win in the ballot therefore will send us into a clash with which ever course we had booked that day, and we’ll a loss of the green fee unless we can get the tee-time rearranged. For this reason we don’t necessarily want to fill every day of the week up with a paid green fee and golf course. That would be designing a forfeit (we are after all setting up to win a ballot and play the Old Course)
Luckily the St Andrews New Course can’t be prebooked, and every other tee-time after 09.00 is offered present-pay-and-play-on-the-day. This is a great way of putting a placeholder into the itinerary without taking on the liability of a prepaid green fee
We try to schedule the New Course in any St Andrews swing to max out this position. If we win a ballot on the day we were going to try and play the New Course, we simply play the Old Course instead. If we win a ballot on another day, then we look to reschedule the affected course onto the day we had the New Course inked in and avoid a forfeit that way. We’ll usually try and put the New Course last in an itinerary then to give ourselves the maximum length of runway onto which we might land the rearranged round
Perversely perhaps, we’re actually hoping not to play the New Course. The reason we wouldn’t play it, is because we’ve won a ballot and are playing the Old Course instead