Show me 500 miles of the UK’s most stunning scenery, isolated utopias and golf courses and I’ll give you three weeks of worshipping the game on revered links and little-known wonderlands, and discovering the heart of golf.
The North Coast 500 (NC500) was launched in 2015, a driving route around the Scottish Highlands which starts in Inverness, heads north to John O’Groats, then 90 miles west to Durness and Cape Wrath, south to Applecross and finally east, back to Inverness. There’s no two-shot penalty if you choose to do it in reverse.
Durness is the most north-westerly golfing outpost on the North Coast 500
(Image credit: Kevin Markham)
When I heard about the route I opened a map – an actual map, not an app – and noted the small red flags dotted along the way. In all, there were 27, including Royal Dornoch. Digging a little deeper revealed a rich history, the names of Old Tom Morris, James Braid and Donald Ross raising the stakes considerably. I saw a golf odyssey in my future, an adventure unlike anything I had undertaken since my 2008 campervan tour of Ireland.
Royal Dornoch is the most famous course on the North Coast 500
(Image credit: Jeremy Ellwoood)
A few weeks later I drove north on a quest to play those 27 courses in 19 days, visit any number of distilleries along the way and experience a Scottish landscape brimming with mystery and romance. The Highlands are crammed with mountains, valleys, beaches, bays, castles and dunes. The Scots have been playing golf in those dunes for centuries and it was time for me to join them.
The journey north
My starting point was Inverness, on the Moray Firth, the region’s capital city and the gateway to the Highlands. I played the parklands of Inverness and Strathpeffer, with the latter claiming the steepest descent of any 1st hole in Scotland, and the former being the first of six James Braid courses along the route. The colourful Muir of Ord followed, another Braid contribution with a train track cutting through the middle of its heathland holes. The 4th and 15th greens sit on opposite sides of the track which also happens to divide the original nine and Braid’s new nine, which opened in 1927.
James Braid masterminded Muir of Ord’s extension to 18 holes in 1927
(Image credit: Kevin Markham)
A few years later he returned to Fortrose & Rosemarkie (F&R), just 20 miles east, redesigning the world’s 15th oldest course on Chanonry Point. There is a unique charm to a course where the sea (Moray Firth) is…
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