LURE OF KINTYRE

Campbeltown and its surrounds in Scotland’s southwest are worthy of a journey

WHERE TO PLAY:

Most low-handicappers who make the trek to this remote big-sky isthmus head straight for Machrihanish Golf Club, rightly considered one of the most special places to play in the whole of Britain and Ireland. However, just up the coast lies homegrown architect David McLay-Kidd’s Machrihanish Dunes (machrihanishdunes.com): as authentic an experience of how this ancient game was once played as you’ll find, well, nowhere else in the world. This under-presented 7,082-yard, par-72 is in harmony and within nature. It has to be: because it lies on a Site of Special Scientific Interest (the only course ever built to have this recognition), the use of fertilisers and pesticides are forbidden; the same goes for the installation of irrigation and drainage. Instead, McLay-Kidd – whose previous credits include blockbuster layouts such as Bandon Dunes in Oregon, Queenwood in England and Laucala in Fiji, to name just three – has taken the natural hollows, valleys and ridges, all set hard on the shores of the Atlantic, to fashion a course that is golf in its purest form: natural and wild with no fewer than six greens and five tees at the ocean’s edge. You’ll need a windproof game, patience and lots of balls to tackle this unique entity, where more than a handful of blind approaches, natural bunkers and a landscape unaltered in millennia challenge. “Mach Dunes was the most minimal build ever,” McLay-Kidd told Golf World magazine. “Even Old Tom would have been impressed!”

WHERE TO EAT:

Book successive reservations for some of the freshest seafood you’ll find at Number Forty Two (gmat42.com), the brainchild of chef Gordon McNeill. Located in Campbeltown, this is a low-key showcase of grilled and game meats, seafood and shellfish, all presented with aplomb to a mostly local clientele. The seasonal menu is an ever-changing one but, if available, don’t forgo the lobster, langoustine and stone crab or, for that matter, the mussels and the scallops. You won’t be disappointed.

WORTH A DETOUR:

Known mostly to whisky connoisseurs, the windswept isle of Islay (pronounced eye-la), 15 miles off Scotland’s west coast, hasn’t really been on the radar of 36-a-day types. That all changed in 2018 with the relaunch of The Machrie Golf Links (themachrielinks.com) on a landmass that’s home to some of the most lauded distilleries in the world, with names like Ardbeg, Bowmore and Laphroaig, nine in all. Originally created in 1891, the bonsai-perfect course which shines today on Laggan Bay is effectively a newbie, refashioned and rebuilt from an ancient footprint by European Tour veteran and European Ryder Cup vice-captain DJ Russell. And it’s a beauty: a playful, penal and pretty track measuring, by today’s standards, a modest 7,000-plus yards, that weaves and wends its way in, out and around the ruggedly natural omnipresent dunes on this stretch of the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides. Just seven of the original greens remain but many of them are contoured and surrounded by strategically placed bunkers and mounding and surrounded by native grasses which frame them to the eye on long approaches, giving the course (unlike some links tracks) visual depth. The lapping waters of the Atlantic are never far away – nor are the other accoutrements, including the six-hole short course, an extensive pitching and putting area and, of course, the driving range. It’s all located on the doorstep of the bijou and even newer 47-room hotel-cumclubhouse that has a whimsical and brightly coloured Scottish-Scandi design ethos and all the chic mod cons you’d expect, as well as a vast vaulted ceiling under which a welcoming bar and restaurant are located and, for wellness, a spa, gym and sauna downstairs.