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.