Golf, ruins and the sea

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: A game in which a white ball is chased by men who are too old to chase anything else” is what Golf means to non-Golfers like me. But the game is more than a passion for those in the know. And St. Andrews being the ‘home’ of golf, I decided to pitch myself into the greens there to see what is it that drove the golfers.

St. Andrews, about 55 miles north of Edinburgh, is home to the “Old Course” which is the oldest and the most famous Golf course in the world. Besides, St. Andrews is also famous for a medieval castle/cathedral, and a University (called, with devastating originality, St. Andrews University).

The bus ride from Edinburgh was about two hours. Bestowed with extremely picturesque landscape - the green undulating hills with sheep, horses, cows and pigs really made me feel as I had travelled back in time. A dense clump of trees would suddenly give way to a small town with a church and a ‘few’ houses. Every 10 to 15 miles, one would see a sign proudly proclaiming “So-and-so town welcomes you” and by the time you could ask ‘town?’ the so-called town would be over. But still it would have a beautifully manicured park and a couple of bars to cater to those 50-odd residents.

To cut a long drive short, soon enough we were in St. Andrews. It was, as expected, a small town. With a medieval ambience, this town has a princely population of 15,000 (of which, apparently, 5000 are students at the University). What strikes it apart from Edinburgh, other than its size, is its apparent affluence. You can see rich young things driving around in their Alfa Romeos and their open-top Mercedes.

I enjoyed walking around St. Andrews and getting lost in its ‘Wynds’ and ‘Closes’. A Wynd or a Pend is a narrow path snaking through houses to join two major roads. In many places wynds link streets at different heights and thus are mostly thought of as being ways up or down hills. Contrary to what their names indicate, wynds can be straight. A Close is a passageway leading into a tenement building shared by several houses. In the past these had long ‘rigs’ at the back for growing vegetables and grazing cows.

According to a legend, in the fourth century, a Greek monk brought relics of St. Andrew (patron saint of Scotland) here. Not much, apart from the legend, remains of those days and the most famous historical monument of the town is a Cathedral, constructed much later in 1159 AD, now in ruins. Memorials (of all shapes and sizes) have been put up by friends and relatives in memory of their loved ones. I found one of them the most interesting, raised in the memory of a young golfer, Tommy, who is believed to have won accolades in the game. His memorial was put up by contributions from sixty golfing societies. St. Rule’s Tower provides panoramic views of the sea and the town. There was also a haunted tower in the complex that apparently houses the ghost of the ‘white lady of St. Andrews’. In no mood to meet dead women, I beat a hasty retreat to the nearby castle.

So many reams of paper have been wetted to describe the beauty of the castles of Scotland. Despite being a resident of Edinburgh, I have never visited the Edinburgh castle. So entering the St. Andrews castle makes it my first ever visit to a castle. It dates back to the 13th century and is reminiscent of the struggle between the English and the Scots (it suffered over 400 years of sieges and wars). The beauty of the castle is enhanced by the fact that it is on a cliff right next to the sea that really gives it a stark appearance. The most interesting part of the castle, however, is a mine and a counter-mine. A mine was dug up by attackers to enter it. When the defenders of the castle came to know of the mine, they dug up their very own counter-mine to ambush and stop the attackers. The mine goes deep inside the earth and is very narrow - one of the few times in life, when my being short in height paid off!

After the Castle, it was a gentle trot to the Old Golf course, which apparently is more than 600 years old - it has 112 bunkers, some of which have interesting names such as “Hell” and “Strath”. The course begins and ends in the town itself and despite being a non-golfer, I could still imagine the pleasure of teeing off on this course with the gentle sea-breeze and the sound of the sea-waves providing background music. The green fee, for those jumping into their golf outfit to make a dash to St. Andrews, is 120 Pounds and apparently there is a waiting period of a couple of months (“I say, fancy a game of golf early next year? Would 5th of January next year be fine with you?”). I hung around for a while watching the professionals and amateurs (there was one gentleman in dark green tartan trousers) strut their stuff. To remind myself of my tryst with golf, I purchased an overpriced golf ball at the British Golf Museum that has fascinating exhibits on the history and development of the game.

Right next to the Golf course is the “West Sands” beach. For those interested in trivia, this three-mile long sandy beach was made famous by “Chariots of fire” - the beach scenes at the beginning and end of the movie plus the shots of Eric Liddle training on a beach were filmed here. Standing there, I could almost imagine Eric Liddle, getting ready to run against Harold Abrams. I was not appropriately attired otherwise I might have broken into a run (with the ‘Chariots of Fire’ theme song being miraculously played in the background). Seals and dolphins are often seen swimming ashore here. Mother nature did not smile on me that day and I was deprived of the sightings.

The town is dotted with elegant buildings of The University of St. Andrews, which is Scotland’s oldest university, founded in 1410-11. Like any other university town, St. Andrews doesn’t have a campus but the university buildings are part of the town itself. The most famous buildings are the quads of two of the colleges – St. Salvator’s in North Street (1451) and St. Mary’s in South Street (1512).

After having soaked in as much history as I could in a day, I decided to amble back to the town centre, which, that day, was hosting a used-book fair and a flower market. Sitting on a roadside café, with the peeling of the church bells in the background, and enjoying the slow languorous pace of the town was a nice way to end a pleasant day.