Tour Dornoch

Dornoch is a town on the northeast coast just to the
north of the Dornoch Firth. A former royal hurgh and county town of Sutherland, it was once the seat of the bishops of Caithness. Dornoch Cathedral was founded in 1224. Partly destroyed by fire in 1570 it was restored in 1835—37 and 1924. The bishop’s castle, built in the 13th century and restored in the 16th, is now the Dornoch Castle Hotel. Dornoch was probably the scene of the last execution of a witch in Scotland in 1727. Golf has been played on the links from early times and a distinguished new course was laid out in 1886 by Tom Morris.

The Royal Golf Hotel is situated on the first tee of the famous Royal Dornoch Course. The hotel is beautifully located on the Dornoch Coastline offering a tranquil base to discover the treasures of the surrounding Highlands. Guests can enjoy a meal in the hotel restaurant or a relaxing drink in the hotel bar area. Dornoch Maps.

A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in... the Scottish Highlands. In 1977, Lorne Rubenstein, an avid golfer, first travelled to Dornoch in the Scottish Highlands. Young and adrift in life, he sought to uncover an authentic sense of self and turned instinctively to a place where his beloved game was purest. The experience had a profound effect on Rubenstein. Twenty-three years later, in 2000, now an established golf writer, Rubenstein returned to Dornoch to spend an entire summer. He rented a flat with his wife close to the Royal Dornoch Golf Course and set out to explore the area on many levels. Rubenstein writes about the melancholy history of the Highland Clearances, which left stunningly beautiful landscape sparsely populated to this day. He writes about the friendly and sometimes eccentric people who love their town, their golf and their single malt whiskey and delight in sharing them with visitors whom they recognize as kindred spirits, but most of all he writes about a summer lived around golf, in a community where golf is king and the golf course is part of the common lands where townspeople stroll of an evening. Playing here, Rubenstein gradually begins to relax, to return to golf as play, as opposed to a game of analysis and effort.

If you would like to Tour Dornoch on a highly personalized small group tour of my native Scotland please e-mail me: Sandy Stevenson

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