Scotland: 3 weeks of photos

[katbird]

For those of you planning a trip to Scotland...greetings

 

Here's the link...

https://imageshack.us/a/lMBl/1

 

Here are 400 or so pix I'd taken on links and between rounds, from New Lanark in the south (Robert Owens' Utopian socialist community) to Durness Golf Club in the north, in small towns and Edinburgh and Glasgow too. I'm very grateful for the above shot courtesy of the celeb photog of the Dunhill Links.

 

Took a few months to get all the photos up on the web (more than 400 of them) but finally did get them up.

 

You'll find pix of courses in Ayr and northward atop Boat of Garten and among the sheep of Brora.

I drove down a lot of fairways (poorly though, I must say) and more than 2500 miles around Scotland in 3 weeks, getting to see a lot of greenery as well as greens...mostly on single lane country roads with cut outs for others driving faster than me or coming from where I was heading...

 

Courtesy of AirBnB, I ate in city kitchens and country kitchens, apartments and condos with furniture that still had the store tags on them.

Ate venison at The Old Course during the Dunhill Championship, and fish 'n chips at the Happy Haggis in Aviemore (very Japanese, tempura texture).

I did get haggis courtesy of one of my AirBnB hosts, not to worry....as well as ice cream made with port and stout (you'll see the line of people waiting to get in Mary's Milk Bar after me)

 

I spent hours in castles empty of crowds but full of spirit, and in other museum-like castles full of people who were fun to watch...as were the museum works themselves, and took quiet times in churches and cathedrals.

 

I heard Mozart in a beautiful concert hall, and modern "folk" fusion in the northern Highlands played by young folk who have a real link to my youthful music of Van Morrison, as well as more traditional Scottish music made by retirees my own age...as well as jazz by Scots whose links go back to swing bands of the 30s but who rock the blues too.

 

You'll see the photos of them all and more, all interspersed, like the trip itself...so enjoy my trip as much as I did....and if you go, try to get off the course and drive down some country roads...

[jay65]

Lovely photos......The Scottish Tourist Board awaits!! :taunt:

[theadvocate_ivan]

Very nice photos you've got there! Looks like a must trip for golfers!

[TerpFangolfer]

Awesome pics...wish some of them had captions to know where they were taken - but I know its alot of work.

 

I recognize some of the Edinburgh shots, and Stirling Castle...as you can see from my avatar I've been to St. A's (but not played yet) - got to play N. Berwick & Levin on a quick trip last year. Visited the Old Course on a Sunday and walked ~50% of the course

 

Now planning a family "trip of a lifetime" - with my parents & siblings for 2018. Whisky tastings for my Dad, golf for my brother, my son & me, castles/museums for the kids, etc etc

[Clambake]

Very nice pics - thanks for taking the time to share them. I'm headed there for the month of May, and enjoyed getting a preview of what we'll be experiencing. Can't wait!

 

[katbird]

Here's some help in identifying the pix....

Check out the Scottish Heritage Pass...I had enough time to get the 7-day entrances (out of 2 weeks IIRC)...and used them on my last 10 day stay in Doune. Well worth it if you want to do some sight/site seeing.

https://www.visitsco...tions/historic/

 

You'll see that most of the sites are central to Perth-Glasgow-Edinburgh

Sterling is the "museumed" Castle with the replicas of the original Unicorn Tapestries found in The Cloisters in New York City...when I told him of my shock of seeing the originals face to face in NYC the guard was thrilled to tell me the story of these in Scotland....

Another famous "museumed" site is Eilean Donan Castle...the one sitting out on the lake on the other side of the long stone bridge walkway...

 

Doune is the restored but unadorned shell that Monty Python used as a set for "...the Holy Grail"

Linlithgow is the castle with the tall stairwell of kids in the windows and cavernous great hall and lovely lake scenes out the windows.

 

Inchmahome Priory is the ruins (with teak bench and empty tall stone window frames on an island near Doune...

 

Inverlochy Castle is the castle literally built on the rocky mount.

 

The two buildings on the knoll are the Ruthven Barracks (you can see the sign post in one pic) near Aviemore where I stayed a weekend to travel around Loch Ness (see the Urquhart Castle pix, and my rental white Skoda in the pull-out). The river beyond the tall pine tree is the River Spey, famed waters for Scotch).

 

The cars on the wall REAL CARS on a HUGE wall are in the Riverside/Transportation Museum in Glasgow...that's MY Honda 400CF at the top of one display...though mine was in blue....A fun few hours there...

 

The grist mill is in Golspie...run by a family that was my AirBnB in that part of Scotland....they also serendipitously sponsored the ceilidh/ceili music fest I got to shoot...more of them here: https://www.facebook...erlandsessions/

 

Can't remember the put where the larger group of "minstrels" played, but it was down the hill on Edinburgh's Royal Mile...just a lucky find..good venison stew there too.

 

As for the golf shots...

The wide-long shot of a par-3 is the 2nd hole at Prestwick St. Nicholas...parred that with a nice chip from the white pickets at the right, past the hole and sunk the 4'er where the ball came to a stop from the back of the green...a very lovely course in Ayr...

The other par-3 with me standing on the tee with a grin carried over from parring the previous par-4 is at Machrihanish Dunes...a course that is a 3+ hour drive from Glasgow, but well worth the walk along this Atlantic Ocean links course...Parred THAT hole too...though I lost all my stamina on the back nine it was NOT a good walk spoilt...I promise.

 

The shot into the sun from atop a "hill" was at Boat of Garten...near Aviemore...a course like the one I 1st played on in the Catskill Mts in New York...and a trio of locals who waited for me at the finish TOTALLY AGREED, saying that they'd been THERE! They had seen me carrying my bag up the hill when they were on that tee box ahead of me and wanted to know who was that guy playing alone carrying his bag on that track...we had a nice chat as the sun set...BTW...I totally lost my tee shot into the sun from where that photo was taken....only to STEP ON IT while searching for in on the fairway near where the 3-some was ahead of me...shades of Goldfinger...

 

The animals are on Brora further north of Boat of Garten...you can get the nice Dornoch Firth Golf Pass that gets a healthy discount to play the courses there...

...incl. Tain where the rainbow shot tells the tale of THAT round played in such rain and wind that when I got out of my car...as others were getting INTO theirs...that the car rocked more than Dustin Johnson's ball in the US Open! It was such a fight to finish the round that I barely remember it...other than a birdie made with a screaming power-fade 5 wood to 2 feet....and meeting up with a 16 year old on the 17th who told me it was always better to wait out the rain and play 9 instead of trying to play 18...wish I'd met him at the club house earlier....still, it was an experience.

 

The par-3 hanging atop the cliffs of the North Sea is at Durness where I had wanted to play but couldn't...oh well...

The down-hill par 3 I already mentioned.

 

The distillery was Old Pulteney in Wick waaay up north of Brora....hard to believe all the world's Old Pulteney comes from those two stills.

 

The historical museums were the Kelvingrove and the Hunterian in Glasgow, the latter on the University of G. campus.

 

As I put this up I realized while I put up some shots of St. Andrews incl. one that looks like "gumby" I neglected to put up some others, incl the grave of "young Tommy"...sooo...as parting shots...

 

 

 

 

 

[thecraw]

Some beautiful photographs.

[hatchj1]

Beautiful pictures.

[katbird]

If it seems that there's a lot nature pix it's because I miss my time in the Rocky Mountains and the cool fresh air there...it's one of the reasons I went to Scotland in the Fall...I've got more days of summer than I need back here in Florida....

Hope the shots encourage people to take some time off the courses to enjoy such a beautiful country...looking at them makes me want to go back!

[TerpFangolfer]

yeah, I definitely recognized St. Andrews Castle & Cathedral...both of which I have visited.

 

thanks for clarification on the others. I Googles and had figured out that Brora was the course with the wandering sheep gallery!

 

Sounds like a great trip...I was there in the fall as well - late Sept. Primarily a work trip so not much time for golf. Mentioned that I played N. Berwick & Levin. Went to St. A's on a Sunday to walk.

And got a weekend outside London to Princes & Royal St. Georges - weather was perfect that time of year!

[farmer]

Where was 0662 taken? Lovely pastoral.

[katbird]

This shot of a sheep meadow bordering a golf course was shot from Stirling Castle...

 

[Walter]

Great album! Thank you for sharing!