Scottish Highlands and St Andrews with Edinburgh Golf Vacation
Includes - St Andrews, Royal Dornoch, Castle Stuart, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns, Dumbarnie, Muirfield, North Berwick, Gleneagles, with the St Andrews New and Castle Courses
Taking the High Road
The combination Scottish Highlands and St Andrews with Edinburgh has grown in popularity in the post covid world. We suspect that this is because it lends itself particularly well to accommodating non-golfers. In reality Edinburgh is a golfer’s code for Muirfield and North Berwick, so they’re ‘sorted’, whilst the Scottish capital itself provides an easy non-golf offer, that frees everyone to do as they please.
Once the capital and the links of the east Lothian have been played however, we relocate to Fife where we’ll be taking aim at the St Andrews Old Course, alongside the world ranked venues of Carnoustie and Kingsbarns. Dumbarnie and the St Andrews courses also add legitimate class
The final leg is the head north into the highlands, for Royal Dornoch and Castle Stuart, which is where we’ll also encounter lochs, glens, and myths and monsters
The Itinerary
Monday – North Berwick (Edinburgh)
Tuesday – Muirfield (Edinburgh)
Wednesday – Kingsbarns (St Andrews town)
Thursday – Dumbarnie (Falkland Palace)
Friday – St Andrews Castle Course (East Neuk of Fife)
Saturday – St Andrews New Course (St Andrews town)
Sunday – Carnoustie (Glamis Castle)
Monday – Castle Stuart (Culloden)
Tuesday – Royal Dornoch (Loch Ness/ Urquhart Castle)
Wednesday – Gleneagles (Pitlochry)
Important note – We will contest St Andrews Old Course ballots for Weds, Thurs, Fri, & Sat. You can read these days as XYZ / St Andrews Old Course. We won’t be able to contest any singles ballots until Weds for subsequent play on Thurs onwards
North Berwick and Carnoustie are amongst the most difficult courses to rearrange were they to go into a clash with a successful ballot. We place North Berwick on Mon afternoon, a narrower window to reduce this risk, and Carnoustie on a Sunday, to eliminate it
Monday - North Berwick
The links of North Berwick are a traditional out and back nine. Undulating fairways, blind shots, tricky burns and even stone walls make their presence felt in the landscape. The course really is a throw back to the experiences of the game’s pioneers who had to interpret the landscape and weave the hazards nature handed them into their own personal tapestries. North Berwick has an endearing old-fashioned feel.
North Berwick also possesses the original ‘Redan’ hole, (15). Found the world over, ‘Redans’ are the most copied hole in golf.
The Redan completes a trio of holes from 13 which is rarely surpassed in Scottish golf, perhaps only Turnberry’s 9 to 11, and Carnoustie’s 16-18 has better claims for being the best consecutive 3 in a row.
North Berwick is one of those rare courses you never hear a bad word said about, and we’re always struck by the fact that it seems to be the most knowledgeable and the best judges who enthuse most about it.
It would be wrong to think that it’s a curiosity relic though. It’s a beguiling world top-50 ranked course on merit.
Tuesday - Muirfield
Frequently ranked inside the world’s top 10, Muirfield is the ‘blue-blooded’ aristocrat of Scottish golf and always immaculately presented. It doesn’t really have any weak holes. So impressed was Jack, he went back to Ohio and built Muirfield Village in homage to the original.
Muirfield instigated a then revolutionary design of two loops of nine. This was to prevent players dialling into the wind of the traditional out and back nine and adjusting. This design ensures that the wind is constantly changing direction so as to test all aspects of your game and reading of a ball in flight. All three paradigms of golf design penal, heroic and strategic.
The prestigious roll call of Muirfield Open championship winners is perhaps its best testimonial. Player, Nicklaus, Trevino, Watson, Faldo, Els & most recently of course, Mickelson. It offers golfers choices and then requires you to execute. It is a golfers, golf course.
Muirfield is notoriously exclusive however, access is limited. Booking early isn’t just advised, it’s pretty well essential.
Wednesday - Kingsbarns
There are records of golf being played at Kingsbarns from 1793, but the modern course opened in 2000, and is set on three-tiered levels, sloping towards the coast. Nearly every hole has stunning views of the North Sea.
Kingsbarns quickly racked up rave reviews and earned a world ranking of about #50, a position which it’s held more or less since.
The par 5, twelfth hole that plays along the arching shoreline to an exposed green, and the par 3, fifteenth, which involves playing a tee-shot across the waves, are often considered to the courses signature assignments. It was the fourth and fifth that caught Tom Doak’s eye when he described as Kingsbarns
“as piece of construction work, Kingsbarns is one of the best projects I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it for myself”
Perhaps of greatest significance is the number of times it beats more illustrious neighbours in surveys amongst visiting Americans since its always immaculately presented.
Kingsbarns completes the trio of East Coast giants that host the European Tour’s Dunhill links challenge each year alongside Carnoustie and the Old Course.
Thursday - Dumbarnie
Dumbarnie opened in 2020, and looks to have replicated the Kingsbarns design with 14 of the 18 holes having unencumbered views of the sea due to it playing on a natural escarpment with 80ft of elevation on the site. A number of high tees are used to provide the drama of hitting drives out to the ocean. Unusually for a links, water has also been introduced, albeit mainly confined to burns rather than lakes. The fairways are wide and forgiving with driveable risk and reward par 4’s a particular feature of the lay-out. The fifteenth looks remarkably similar to the 7th at Valhalla.
The philosophy behind it is aimed challenging the thinking golfer rather than humiliating them through penalty; as course designer Clive Clark remarked
“I have yet to hear a golfer come in from his round and declare: I really enjoyed a great round of golf today – I only lost 6 balls and 3-putted five greens!”
In 2021 Dumbarnie was named the world’s best new golf course at the international world golf awards which you have to imagine will go some way towards securing its top-100 position as it begins to bed down and evolve.
Friday - St Andrews Castle Course
‘The Castle’ is the newest addition to the clan St Andrews (if we require the qualification to be a new build – the Craigtoun Course was added in 2025 but was technically a management arrangement as the Trust took over the old Dukes Course from the hotel).
Set atop cliffs it’s perhaps more Pebble Beach, than Scotland, yet the course has successfully cultivated a links character. The elevation provides stunning vistas of the bay and town below, making it one of the most photogenic courses in the country. You won’t be the first person to pause and smile as you look down into the town of St Andrews itself with all the historic landmarks on the skyline and simply think Wow! The course is really quite dramatic as the sea can usually be relied on to put up a display of raw energy. The eighth and and the par 3, seventeenth, ‘the Braes’ are particularly awesome.
Saturday - St Andrews New Course
“New” in the context of St Andrews means 1895!
The course is often said to be the town’s favourite. It’s a tighter and more defined course than its regal neighbour, and aided by yellow gorse bushes, it tends to be more aesthetic too. The ‘New’ runs adjacent to the Old course and as a consequence has similar characteristics. The fairways are undulating but not as dipped as the Old course, leading to fewer hanging lies. A traditional out and back nine, only the 3rd and 15th share a green. The burn wends its way through a low dune system and features some particularly charismatic holes. The 464yd tenth is often cited as the pick. Think about it logically. It’s likely that the newer course that was designed for purpose, would be the better golf course than the ancient artefact. The good folk of St Andrews know!
Sunday - Carnoustie
Dubbed ‘Car-Nasty’, Carnoustie is considered by many to be the most difficult links in the Open Championship rotation
In recent years it has seen some dramatic finishes, none more so than in 1999 when Jean van de Velde took an eight at the 72nd hole to throw away the claret jug. Iconic images of him paddling in the notorious ‘Barry Burn’ have entered golfing legend. The final four holes are the hardest finish on the rotation. After the carnage of 1999 (6 over won) Sport Illustrated described it as
“a nasty antique that was brought down from the attic after 24 years …the rough was deeper; and the R&A made the fairways as narrow as an eel’s appendix scar”.
Whereas the eighteenth is the hole that has often generated the most drama. The par 3 sixteenth has the highest average scoring par 3 on the Open Championship rotation as indeed the closing four are the hardest. The Par 5, sixth ‘Hogan’s Alley’, is another famous hole with a punitive out of bounds fence running down it’s left
1999 Carnoustie reduced Sergio Garcia to tears after successive scores of 89 and 83
Monday - Castle Stuart
Castle Stuart is another modern addition to the golfing landscape having opened in July 2009.
The course is set on two-tiered balconies overlooking the dark and foreboding waters of the Moray Firth. Players enjoy stunning panoramas from the highest elevations. The course is rich in the textured signature landscape of Scottish ‘whins’, gorse and broom, heather, and marram from beginning to end. These change colour with the seasons as nature commanded, and weave a tapestry of highland hues into this landscape mosaic of rugged beauty.
The course has quickly established a bit tour pedigree when it hosted the prestigious Scottish Open, where Luke Donald and Alex Noren have triumphed. It was used successfully by Phil Mickelson in 2013 as a springboard to Open success a month later at Muirfield.
Tuesday - Royal Dornoch
Golf Digest has rated Royal Dornoch the highest of Scotland’s many worthy candidates, and it remains one of elite quartet that vies for the title of best courses.
The Championship course represented a paradigm in design that endures today. The ‘bump-and-run‘ was the traditional shot to mitigate a links wind. Elevated plinth greens were introduced and ringed with fiendish pot-bunkers to guard them from any such commando approach. Without completely taking the traditional ‘stock shot’ out of the equation, a degree of risk was added. Dornoch therefore challenges you to go the aerial route, and ride the wind. Iron play is the key to the course. The rationale is simple: hit a good approach shot and you should be rewarded. Hit a bad one, and you pay the penalty.
Tom Watson said of Dornoch “the most fun I’ve ever had on a golf course”.
Wednesday - Gleneagles
The majestic trio of courses at Gleneagles are a masterpiece of golf course design, which has caught the imagination of both professional and amateur alike. Lee Trevino remarked whilst standing on the first, “that if this is heaven I sure hope they have some tee times available”.
The regal King’s Course is certainly one of the most beautiful and exhilarating places to play golf in the world, with the springy moorland turf underfoot, the sweeping views from the tees all around, the rock-faced mountains to the north, the green hills to the south, and the peaks of the Trossachs and Ben Vorlich on the western horizon.
Threading through high ridges on the north and west sides of the estate, the Queen’s course is the most aesthetic of the Gleneagles trinity. It presents you with lovely woodland settings, lochans and ditches as water hazards, as well as many moorland characteristics.
Having hosted the 2014 Ryder and 2019 Solheim Cups, the Centenary Course is the longest and probably the most recognisable today. It plays out towards the dark glen, sweeping up the Ochil Hills to the summit of the pass below Ben Shee, which joins it to Glendevon. Course architect, Jack Nicklaus, described it as “The finest parcel of land in the world I have ever been given to work with”
Featured Group
Do I put something about video in here?
What's Involved
This is no definitive template for the Scottish Highlands and St Andrews with Edinburgh Golf Vacation. If we fly via London, then we can connect direct to Inverness and treat it as a linear north to south, point to point itinerary of Inverness in/ Edinburgh out. This is the lowest mileage option. It can also run south to north as we’ve laid it out here.
The Scottish Highlands and St Andrews with Edinburgh Golf Vacation can be set up to flow clockwise or anti clockwise, all we have to do adjust to land on the favoured days of the week
It’s predominantly a point-to-point tour however, for although it travels to three distinct regions, it probably requires five overnight destinations due to the mileage
The Scottish Highlands and St Andrews with Edinburgh Golf Vacation is laid out as a ten night duration that observes a point-to-point itinerary, staying at:
- Edinburgh – 2 nights
- St Andrews – 4 nights
- Carnoustie – 1 night
- Inverness – 2 nights
- Gleneagles or Stirling – 1 night
10 nights is beginning to take us into the sort of territory where we might need to consider introducing a rest day, although the timeframe that Muirfield requires us to observe to book, tends to ensure that 80% will miss out there anyway, and if we fly into Inverness, then we would need to necessarily use Gleneagles to help break up the mileage, so could omit a day there too
At about 750 miles, the Scottish Highlands and St Andrews with Edinburgh Golf Vacation is a high mileage medium intensity transport burden. It involves two significant drives to highlands and back, albeit one of these could be eliminated if we flew to Inverness via London and turned it into a single flow linear path of travel
In total, this should only require about 20 hrs of road time, which is an average of about 2 hrs a day
We wouldn’t advise the use of a hired driver for the Scottish Highlands and St Andrews with Edinburgh Golf Vacation. The three regions we’re seeking to link up are too far apart so we’ll likely incur ‘driver away’ overnight accommodation costs (remember a hired driver would budget for their return journey when seeking to evaluate a day-trip)
This trip can support Luxury, Premier and Affordable options, albeit Carnoustie is a bit locked in for lack of alternatives and would be considered ‘premier’
By basing ourselves for the first two nights in Edinburgh we deliver a high-class, non-golf offer to our doorstep.
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.
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
One of the big bonuses to the Scottish Highlands and St Andrews with Edinburgh Golf Vacation is that it opens up the north to include Culloden, Loch Ness, and Urquhart Castle.
We also have the possibility of introducing a cluster of attractions around the gateway town of Pitlochry too on the transfer between Carnoustie and Inverness, to include places like Killiecrankie, The Queens View of Loch Tummel, Blair Castle, the House of Bruar, and the Blair Athol Distillery
Glamis Castle combines well with Carnoustie and historic city of Stirling can briefly be visited enroute to the Ayrshire coast since its in a direct line of travel from Gleneagles
Muirfield ask we possess handicaps of 24 (gentleman) and 36 (ladies), so long as we can meet these, we’ll be alright with the others
- North Berwick (24 & 36)
- Carnoustie (28 & 36)
- St Andrews (36)
Unlike some courses who needn’t be rigid in enforcing their handicap thresholds, Muirfield and 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
Muirfield only permit visitor play on Tues and Thurs, and only then as fourballs, up to a maximum of twelve per application. If you apply as anything other than a fourball, you’ll be rejected
Muirfield release their tee-times for play the following season in February. They are the first course to move and we need to be about 18 months ahead of the curve to succeed there
Tee-times are allocated by a lottery, albeit your chances of success are better if you go through a golf tour operator (GTO). Be aware however, GTO’s are limited to 20 nominated golfers per season, so in reality you probably need to get someone to support your application around Nov/ Dec of the year before that. Duplicate entries will lead to you being disqualified
North Berwick don’t permit visitor play on Fri, Sat or Sun morning. Sunday afternoon play has seemingly been restored after having been withdrawn previously, suggesting perhaps that it’s vulnerable.
Carnoustie 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 gently favourable if we sought to use every opportunity to do so
We won’t contest a ballot on Tuesday against the shadow of Muirfield (we’d never get Muirfield rearranged) and in many respects Muirfield is an equally sought after and prestigious round than St Andrews anyway
We normally advise against contesting Monday’s ballot on the shadow of North Berwick as well. Again, this is a difficult round to rearrange, but since we arrive on Monday morning, it would be particularly disruptive to head to St Andrews. There is a realistic forfeit risk to this
We should be able to contest a total of four open ballots (Weds to Sat) and three ‘singles’ ballot (Thurs to Sat), for a total of seven.
About Activities
Testimonial
From BB Canada
“I told Alun the courses I was interested in playing and he prepared a stay and play package with 14 days of outstanding golf, but also tremendous site seeing opportunities for my wife.”
From JC Illinois
“His attention to detail is amazing--I think our travel plan booklet ran to forty-eight pages, with gorgeous descriptions of cities and sights, plus maps showing where to go to catch trains, or walk from trains to hotels, sights and golf courses, etc.”
From DF Alabama
“I will cherish the memories for a long time- especially the wonderful times spent on and off the golf course with two of my brothers and brother-in-law. None of the memories and golf would have been possible or enjoyed without your tremendous planning and logistical support.”
AS from Colorado
“Alun and Faraway Fairways created possibly the most memorable golf trip we have ever experienced. EPIC is the only word that comes to mind.”
From Florida/ New York, 2025
“We were hopeful to secure a 4 ball at St. Andrews while avoiding the massive expense other operators had quoted. He was very clear about the plan for achieving a tee time at the Old Course through the ballot, including detailed instruction on how it could be done, and what our odds were. He suggested mid- to late April as the best chance of success and advised that this is also the least rainy part of the year. We took his advice and trusted the process. Well, he was right on all counts!”
From SB, Minnesota
“We wholeheartedly recommend Alun and Faraway Fairways if you’re looking for a golf trip that is effortless, enjoyable, and truly unforgettable—even for a non-golfer in the mix! My husband and I will be daydreaming about this trip for years to come. 5.5 stars!”
From JB, California
“The best part was that the service was surprisingly affordable. They were thousands of dollars below other quotes that I received, in fact the prices were very similar to what I would have paid if I would have booked everything on my own.”
From JCA, Maryland
“I would and will highly recommend your company to anyone looking to plan an unforgettable golf trip. Thank You for putting together a fantastic trip for J.C. and me”
From WF Connecticut
“I think all eight of us would agree that Alun at Faraway Fairways did an absolutely wonderful job of putting this “golf vacation of a lifetime” together for us. His focus on the details was extraordinary from the choice of courses and the timing of the tee times, the amazingly beautiful accommodations along with some excellent meal selections, and the transportation options he provided to get us from place to place.”
From DR South Carolina
“You are about to tee it up in your Major. Seek wisdom, integrity and professionalism. Alun Davies and Faraway Fairways will not disappoint you. They cannot assure a calm sunny day with temperatures in the 70’s on the Old Course.”
From MM, California
“One fantastic trip you organized, and more importantly took ownership of in terms of daily communication and stewardship during our 2+ weeks in Scotland and Ireland. The logistics were spotless…100% of the transports were on time and excellent, the lodging choices spectacular and the golf was off the charts in terms of quality and arrangements made”
DH from California
“You cannot go wrong with the support Faraway Fairways offered. I did this trip solo and all last minute but I have already begun to plan the next trip which will include my best golfing buddies.”