While my partner on this blog and life was busy golfing in one part of Scotland, I was wrapping up in Northern Ireland with a round at Royal Portrush, host of The Open Championship in 2025. It is a spectacular venue, well worthy of the oldest golf championship in the world.

While I would love to say I outperformed, let’s just say that the game has not been kind to me on this trip, but I have had fun. Portrush is a stern test as the locals would say and worth a visit if you are a golfer. If not, you can visit the nearby Giant’s Causeway, an area of roughly 40,000 interlocking basalt columns on the Northern Ireland coast, which we stopped at before our round.

Unlike my wife and her crew, who were smart enough to schedule an off day, Portrush was round four of a nine-consecutive round slog through Northern Ireland and the Scottish west coast. After the late round at Portrush and an even later last dinner in Belfast, we gathered at 6:30 am the next day to head to the ferry terminal for our trip to Scotland.

After disembarking in Scotland and transferring our baggage to a new bus and driver, we headed to Turnberry for lunch and another late round. It’s a wonderful golf course. Too bad the gaudy fingerprints of the owner, whose name I will not utter, are all over the place. Faux gold plated fixtures, tacky political memorabilia in the pro shop window (the only shop I refused to even enter) etc.

Next we were off to our lodgings at Dundonald Golf Links, which operates its own hotel. It’s not a hotel in the normal sense. There is no large building with individual rooms. Instead there are “lodges” of varying sizes dotted about the property that appear to be prefabricated.

Four of us are sharing one with separate bedrooms with a common living area, kitchen and laundry. It is actually quite nice but the local rumor is that the place is losing money. Not our problem. The course is a good layout, but on the day we played the greens were very, very slow.

Across a railroad track lies the Western Gailes Golf Club, which runs along the Firth of Clyde. It featured 10 consecutive holes playing dead into a stiff breeze. That was fun.

We wrap up at two more seaside links, Prestwick, the original home of the British Open for several years, and Royal Troon. It’s been quite a trip, with more non-golf activity to come.