Day 17 of 21 "The Olde Course at St. Andrews Scotland"
We have one full day in Scotland and we'll be taking a bus from our Airbnb to the main bus station downtown. From there, it's a short walk to The Olde Course at St. Andrews, the birth of golf.
The sun sets around 10pm and rises around 4am. Without blackout curtains we're tricked into thinking it's time to get up, so eye masks are helpful to stay asleep. We walked one block to our bus stop. Once in town, we walked another 3 blocks and arrived at the Olde Course at 11am. What a thrill it was to see it in person. I took hundreds of photos to get the best ones below. There will be a few comments underneath some of the pictures.
Here's how the day went: (#8 has some VERY interesting facts about golf in Scotland)
1) It's Sunday, so we were expecting no active play, but as we arrived the last group was just teeing off. There was a woman's tournament going on, possibly a qualifier of some kind. And ahead of the tournament were other players finishing up on #18. They must've started at 7am.
2) After taking the first set of pictures and figuring out what was going on and why there were golfers on the course, we realized we could walk the fairway behind the last group and play vicariously through them. What a fantastic turn of events for us. (When we returned to our Airbnb at the end of the day, our hosts were very surprised to hear anyone was playing today. Jackie found it particularly interesting that it was a women's tournament she hadn't heard about.)
3) There were a few other spectators following this last group, and there was an incident with a crow stealing a player's lunch. These crows are much like the lunch stealing black and white squirrels at Myrtle Beach.
4) We walked the fairways on the front 9 and moved to the path on the back 9 to watch the other groups finish playing.
5) Once we were back to where we started, we went to the Olde Course Shop to buy souvenirs before they closed at 6pm. We had only an apple to eat since breakfast, it's now 3pm, so we were overdue for lunch.
6) Lunch at The Jigger Inn. We shared a plate of fish and chips and forgot to take a picture we were so hungry, but it looked just like the other fish and chips we've had and just as good. We also tried the sticky toffee pudding. yummy.
7) With plenty of daylight and sunshine, we got the all important photo on the famous Swilcan Bridge. The course officials allowed the public to take pictures between golf shots. The course is very accommodating to tourists even during play.
8) Then finally, a walk back to town to Greyfriars Inn to watch the PGA Championship, get some blogging done, and have an appetizer for dinner since we had a late lunch. The two golfers sitting next to us told us about their Scotland golf experience beyond the Olde Course. The told us more about the weather, how dangerous the conditions can get, how some golfers have been swept off the cliffs to their doom, and now the course will close when the wind gets too fierce because golfers don't have the sense to go home. In dense fog, there are fog lights 20 yards from the green so you know which direction to hit the ball. And this one is the best. A player has to have a doctor's note to ride in a cart. All other players walk. We noticed that the golf carts have steering wheels on the left just like in America. I guess their was no point in changing that since golf cart paths are one way only and the carts must be coming from America.
9) While walking the course I looked for golf balls in the bushes. No luck. All I found was trash blown and stuck into the yellow blooming gorse. Patrick managed to find a pink ball in the rough and triple checked to be sure it wasn't in active play, so that was a free souvenir. I also found a St. Andrews pencil along the walking path, and a tee that I can say came from the Olde Course. That's another observation, the tee boxes were virtually clear of broken tees.
Okay, time for pictures. It was cloudy upon arrival. A few hours later, patches of blue appeared and the sky grew sunnier and sunnier.
