Ancient relics are visible from the fairways that now occupy these same shores, and any trip to play the seaside links where the game began gives visitors a glimpse of a deeper history, of where Scotland began. In the fourteenth century, an army of Highlanders helped William Wallace defeat the English at Stirling Bridge to assert Scotland's autonomy. And it was in the Highlands that the struggle for independence was finally lost, at the bloody Battle of Culloden. On a muddy moor southeast of Inverness in the spring of 1746, an undermanned army of Scottish nationalists was crushed by the government's forces. Scotland and the Highlands were never the same.
History is by no means the only compelling reason to drive north.
The British Open rota courses get more attention, but the northeast is where the wildest of Scottish linkslands lie. Royal Dornoch, Nairn and Cruden Bay are as good as any trio of courses to be found farther south. And there is nothing, anywhere, quite like the Carnegie Club. Just west of Dornoch, the club houses members and, if space allows, occasional guests in the luxuriously appointed Skibo Castle, the retreat of one of Scotland's most famous emigrants, Andrew Carnegie. Visitors can play the updated Carnegie Links when they aren't out riding or practicing falconry.