A majority of clients choose to self-drive. Doing so has many advantages, cost being just one.

If we’ve got St Andrews in our itinerary (and most do) self-drive affords us the extra flexibility to respond to the changing picture associated with ballot results.

Self-drive puts us in control of our own programme in-situ. In common with a lot of operators, self-drive is our default offer. Unless you really have a deep aversion to self-driving, it normally represents the best option, but if you really don’t want to self-drive, then don’t, it’ll only cause stress and potentially ruin our trip.

Self driving also allows you to set your programme for the day based around your own limitations or ambitions to a greater degree as we needn’t be restricted by commercial driving regulations. It means we can potentially reach further and consequently expanded our scope of the possible

Faraway Fairways also offer third party hired drivers. The big advantage to this option is that someone else familiar with the roads and driving conditions takes the responsibility.

We will however lose a lot of flexibility, particularly in the evenings. Even with a driver with whom you hit it off, it’s never quite the same as being in your own friendship group.

Dependent on the size of the vehicle involved, hired drivers will find that they’re under time limitations (commercial driving regulations). This can limit how far we can reach in a given day. This can become a particularly poor use of resource if we find ourselves needing to waste 5 hrs+ of ‘standing time’ on a golf course. It heavily restricts how far we can move on.

‘Standing time’ usually occurs on a full luggage transfer days when we’re playing golf as part of our movement

Hired drivers are usually more expensive than self drive, but one the exceptions to this is the traditional St Andrews golf week break. Because three of the courses are walk out to play, with another two being little more than a local ‘hop’, a hired driver model will normally be less expensive than a self-drive for this. Even adding Kingsbarns and Dumbarnie might still see us beat the self drive hire

Seating capacities are rarely a problem on golf trips. Luggage however is. Armed with a golf bag and a primary luggage item, golfers invariably generate a need for a larger capacity vehicle than our bare numbers suggest we should.

The price of transport hires is dynamic however. That is to say that its a static cost divided by the number of people burden sharing it. This generates a per person cost.

A vehicle can however be adjusted in line with the size of the party. This tends to mean that there is a degree of stability in the per person price. Two people sharing the cost of a smaller vehicle is often very similar to that of four people sharing the price of a larger one

Perhaps the most awkward number is three golfers. They’d generate six luggage items, which is too big for any conventional car. We’d need the next size up, but would be one person light in our party size to help absorb the cost of this

It’s possible to operate a multiples of four strategy in convoy in the pursuit of autonomous flexibility (especially if the St Andrews ballot is involved), but eventually we might need a larger capacity midi-bus/ coach as this arrangement will begin to stress.

This can easily get overlooked (especially on large parties who think they can get away with hiring a single coach)

When we win an Old Course ballot we’ll invariably go into a clash with another golf course we were due to play that day. We cancel that course in order to play St Andrews, but we will forfeit the green fee on that course unless we can rearrange it. In most cases we’ll succeed in rearranging it, but not only does this mean that we’re now seeking a new tee-time on a new date, we’re potentially altering our transport arrangement too

As you can probably imagine, this is a lot easier to execute on a self-drive, when the only people we’re asking to be flexible and respond to the changes in supply are ourselves. Once we start asking a hired driver to adjust, it potentially becomes harder, and particularly so the further away from St Andrews the affected course is. It takes more time out of their book (they’ll likely have other bookings on their day-sheet and might not be able to adjust)

It becomes an even bigger issue if a group of 16 let’s say, has decided to use a mini coach. All of sudden they’re facing a situation where 12 of them might want to go to Carnoustie whilst another 4 are trying to reinstate a cancelled round at Dumbarnie …. this becomes messy when they realise that a single vehicle can’t be in two different places at once

This is one of the reasons why Faraway Fairways tries to set self-drive groups up as autonomous multiple fourball units operating their own MPV’s, although that will eventually breakdown on very large parties. When that happens, and the very least, we need some emergency self-drive capacity within the party to plug any such gaps as they emerge

A majority of overseas visitors will arrive and depart from Edinburgh Airport, but other options also exist.

North Berwick and Gleneagles are about 50 mins from Edinburgh Airport and often used as the first point of play

We normally reckon on having to allow for 4hrs for St Andrews (including airport admin and processing any vehicle hire). If we’ve landed circa 08.00 to 09.00, we can consider contesting ballots from about 12.30 onwards

There are some direct flights to Glasgow. For reasons of managing local mileage, Glasgow is better for anyone playing the Ayrshire Coast (Troon/ Turnberry)

Inverness has connecting flights from London. Anyone playing the Highlands will save themselves in the region of 3 hrs road time driving north from Edinburgh if they can organise things so as to arrive in Inverness.

Belfast also has connecting flights to Inverness which allows us to potentially sneak Royal Dornoch into itineraries that combine with Northern Ireland now

Aberdeen has connecting flights with Dublin, which means Portmarnock is a possible combination

Most overseas visitors who begin in Ireland will use Dublin.

Portmarnock and the Island Club are 20 mins from Dublin Airport which often makes them ideal first day choices.

Ireland does have a second point of entry on the west coast at Shannon. We only really advise using Shannon however if we’re going to stay out west. Shannon’s connections to Scotland are particularly poor. We often find that we need to use Cork instead (which combines well with Old Head) if we’re to avoid driving right across the country to Dublin in order to execute any onward connections

The train enjoys a special relationship with Scotland’s golf links, being responsible for the development of so many of them, circa 1880 – 1895. This legacy means that it does become an occasional option for playing a few select courses if we wanted to reduce the driving burden. Prestwick (150 yds), and North Berwick (400 yds) both have stations within walking distance of the course. Despite its mileage suggesting otherwise, Royal Aberdeen can surprisingly come under consideration if staying in central Edinburgh. A fast train makes this a lot more practical than you feel it should be by just looking at a map

Anyone playing Royal St Georges on the English south east coast is advised to use the train between London and Sandwich, and then take the train the following day from London to Scotland

St Andrews doesn’t have a station. The nearest is at Leuchars, (12 mins away).

There is a good service into Edinburgh from Leuchars however which non-golfers are encouraged to use rather than driving into capital, since Edinburgh’s Waverley Station is particularly well positioned

Any non-golfers wishing to visit Glasgow from Edinburgh would also be advised to use the train, as they might do if visiting Stirling on a day-trip too

There are a couple of programmes where the use of a car ferry is essential, and indeed, part of the ethereal experience. The most obvious of these is the Wilderness Tour to the Highlands & Islands where we might use up to seven car ferries to variously thread together the Isles of Arran, Islay, South Uist, Harris and Skye.

Any day trip from the Ayrshire coast to the Isle of Arran will also need to use a car ferry from Troon or Ardrossan (55 mins)

For the most part, the Scottish crossings are short and relatively well sheltered, albeit the one between Mallaig to Lochboisdale takes longer and will involve sailing out a bit further to South Uist

The Irish Sea circular tour can also involve two car ferries sailing between Dublin and Holyhead (North Wales) and Liverpool and Belfast. We can sometimes ‘bury’ an accommodation on the night sailing between Liverpool and Belfast (8 hrs)

There is also a third route which we’re perhaps using less these days, which links Belfast and Cairnryan (west Scotland). This crossing takes a little over 2 hours and we tend to see it on Scottish/ Irish combos that involve Turnberry and Royal County Down or Portrush. The drawback to it is that we usually need to incur a punitive one-way hire penalty with any vehicle, unless we’re able to set up an ‘out and back’ route that involves playing a course and missing one out, and then picking up the missed courses on the return leg

Perhaps the best way of getting around Edinburgh is to use the 24/48 hour, ‘hop-on/ hop-off’ tour bus rover ticket. Three bus operators serve a circuit featuring fourteen stops that take in the city’s principal attractions. The ticket is inter-changeable between all three. We simply buy our ticket for unlimited use and begin hopping on and hopping off, on what is otherwise hilly city and not necessarily ‘car friendly’

Edinburgh has a modern tram system that serves the airport. Dublin has a local commuter train (the DART)

In truth we don’t tend to make as much use of these, but the Edinburgh Tram can be useful way of transferring to and from the Airport as it drops us right outside the terminal. It only really works for hotels that are within an easy walking distance of a tram stop though