But it's nearly in the Arctic Circle!
A lot of golfers will look to the Open Championship venues and top-50 global rankings when compiling their ‘bucket list’. For the most this works. St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns are a workable cluster in Fife. North Berwick joins Muirfield, both of which are only 45 mins from Edinburgh airport. That’s neat too. Royal Troon and Turnberry are only 25 miles apart, so a diversion to the west coast to pick up the pair is manageable, but then we come to Royal Dornoch! With a world ranked in the top-10, it kind of completes the list, but it’s only when we get the map out and realise that we’re heading off to the Arctic Circle that the question of How to Fit Royal Dornoch into a ‘Bucket List’ Golf Trip of Scotland? begins to consume us
In truth, it would be nice to include. It kind of completes the picture, but no one could describe this as being geographically easy
Some Mileage and Road Time Estimates
It’s not just mileage and road time we need to factor in. We need consider food and the time we’ll require to ‘limber up’ before playing and that which we might also wish for to ‘hang around’ a bit after a round of golf
Edinburgh Airport to Dornoch is 195 miles, which Faraway Fairways would estimate to take 4 hrs 27 mins. We don’t believe this is sensible
Gleneagles to Dornoch is 168 miles, which Faraway Fairways would estimate to take 3 hrs 52 mins
Carnoustie to Dornoch is 190 miles, which Faraway Fairways would estimate to take 4 hrs 33 mins. It’s difficult to work up any enthusiasm for this option either
Pitlochry to Dornoch is 127 miles, which Faraway Fairways would estimate to take 3 hrs 02 mins
The Geography - where is it?
The first question you might find yourself asking then if considering how to include Royal Dornoch in a Scottish golf trip is, whether it’s worth it? Well, yes, it probably is. Royal Dornoch doesn’t get ranked over and over again in the world’s top-10 by accident.
The next thing we need to establish however, is that Royal Dornoch is not only in the Highlands, it’s actually in the northern Highlands. It’s even more awkward in other words. There are no ‘easy’ ways to include Royal Dornoch in a Scottish golf trip, but there are things we can do which might make it a bit more manageable.
Daylight can be our Friend
If we’re playing in the height of summer then we have a natural ally. At these northerly latitudes the sun rises between 4 and 5 o’clock in the morning and sets anywhere between 10 and 11 o’clock in the evening and If we possess a healthy attitude towards mileage, have a group that can share the driving burden, and are prepared to simply ‘saddle up and go’ we’ll probably have about eighteen hours of useable daylight. It’s probably best to use the morning light to travel on, then playing into the evening
Even if we push into fringe months of May or August we’re only losing about 75-90 mins at either end of the day. We might spend the first or final half hour of the day driving in half light conditions but it’s still manageable. What it means though is that we’re very often trying to land on a narrower tee-time playing window
Coming from Pitlochry
The A9 is the main artery between the Central Belt and the Highlands. It’s mixture of dual-carriageway and single track road. We hope to hit a bit further north combining Carnoustie with Pitlochry to just about make a ‘Dornoch day’ a doable.
What we’d be attempting is a two night stay at the highland gateway town of Pitlochry to shorten things up by travelling further north the evening before the morning that we launch to Dornoch
This would mean playing Carnoustie and driving to Pitlochry (1 hr 42 mins) in order to put ourselves in a better position (think of it as camp 2, whereas Gleneagles might be closer to ‘advance base camp’). We’d then launch our bid to Dornoch from Pitlochry the next morning and return the same evening
Pitlochry to Dornoch is 127 miles, which Faraway Fairways would estimate to take 3 hrs 02 mins. If we add 6 hrs for play, circulating around the club, and food, then we have a 12 hr day in total
Pitlochry is something of a compromise destination as it just about keeps us within a workable travelling range of St Andrews should we need to divert for a ballot win
Coming from Gleneagles
Gleneagles is about 45 mins nearer to Dornoch than Edinburgh. We wouldn’t be of the view that Edinburgh to Dornoch and back in a day is doable
This 45 mins saving might not sound like a lot, but on a return trip it works out at 1.5 hrs, and every little bit helps etc
Gleneagles to Dornoch is 168 miles, which Faraway Fairways would estimate to take 3 hrs 52 mins. If we add about 6 hrs for playing, food, and circulating around the club (we aren’t going to get straight out of a vehicle and walk, yet alone play golf) then we’re probably close to a 14 hr day. Yes, it’s tiring, but it’s been done before. We’ll sleep well! but rather than joking about this, we perhaps need to accept that is right on the margins
At the very least, it would perhaps make sense not to return to Gleneagles, but rather spend the night somewhere more northerly in the A9 corridor (Aviemore or Pitlochry) and pick the baton up again tomorrow
Inverness Airport and a point of start or finish
So are there any other ways to include Royal Dornoch in a Scottish golf trip that doesn’t involve a demanding round road trip whilst also wrapping up the rump of the other courses on our list?
Inverness Airport is only 75 mins from Royal Dornoch but has no flights from Glasgow or Edinburgh. It does however have daily flights from London Heathrow. If we were to route through London as our hub, then we can chop the road burden down by placing Dornoch at the start or the end of a trip (albeit this will likely incur in one-way vehicle penalty)
Weirdly perhaps, Dornoch also combines surprisingly well with Northern Ireland (Portrush or Royal County Down). This is because Inverness has a daily flight to Belfast. It used to have one to Dublin as well, but this never got restored after covid
Inverness isn’t a particularly busy airport and we might even go so far as to describe the transfer as “slick”
The Dornoch Castle Hotel
Quite understandably however, we might take the view that we’ve done enough for the day by the late afternoon. Instead of the ‘one big day’ we might choose to spend the night in the Highlands and pick things up again the next morning. The Dornoch Castle hotel isn’t the only accommodation in Dornoch that could come to the rescue, but it is perhaps the most interesting if we were looking for ‘an experience’.
This is a genuine Scottish castle. It’s not a pastiche recreation that has adopted a ‘castle’ name to make it sound more attractive. It would allow us to tick ‘Scottish castle’ off your bucket list.
Alternatively if you were prepared to take an hour out of the following day and draw stumps at about five o’clock, we could go south to Inverness and even add a sunset cruise on Loch Ness to our haul
No Short Cuts
In summary, there is no getting away from the fact we’re going to have to do some mileage to include Royal Dornoch. So be prepared and plan for that. There might however, be some options where we can disguise the burden a bit or distribute it in such a way that we notice it less
We can include Royal Dornoch as follows
We’ve included three options below for Royal Dornoch, but these are itineraries where Dornoch is an integral part of the architecture. What we’re really looking at here is how we might sneak it into something where it isn’t
Launching from Gleneagles is just about ‘doable’ but it would perhaps make sense to stay a bit further north on the evening rather than trying to return the same day to Gleneagles
Launching from Pitlochry makes more sense. That’s doable as a day trip, and we should be able to retain the integrity of the programme by playing golf at either Carnoustie or Gleneagles before decamping to Pitlochry for the evening
Otherwise the solutions which is going to be least burden on us by way of road time, probably go through London or Belfast and using a scheduled flight
Note that this one will involve a stretch on a long day trip launching from the Pitlochry area
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We don't need to make this an ordeal by 101 filtering questions! In reality there are probably little more than half a dozen things we need to know to build out a proposal. The guidance below might help you frame answers
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