Brora

yeah.

It's definitely, you're right, it's not the, if you want a proper coastal course, it's not the place, is it? You want to go to, I mean, up my way, like you go to Gullsby and Brora and all them and they're like just hugging the coast the whole way, Nairn as well, I think, eh?

Well, yeah, a lot of them are.

A lot of the ones along the North East Coast, yeah.

Certain stone slabs and blocks are dispersed over it.

Brora, the post town of Garvan, lies some six miles to the south-west, and from it a track over the moor leads to the rapids immediately above the Picts' Pool, across which, by somewhat extravagant striding from boulder to boulder, a man can pass dry foot when the river is low, and make his way up a steep path to the north of the basaltic rock, and so to the village.

But this transit demands a steady head, and at the best is a somewhat giddy passage.

Otherwise the road between it and Brora lies in a long detour higher up the moor, passing by the gates of Garvan Lodge, where I was stopping.

For some vague and ill-defined reason the pool itself and the Picts' Castle had an uneasy reputation on the countryside, and several times trudging back from a day's fishing I have known my gilly take a longish circuit, though heavy with fish, rather than make this short cut in the dusk by the castle.

On the first occasion when Sandy, a strapping yellow-bearded viking of twenty-five, did this, he gave as a reason that the ground round about the castle was mossy, though, as a God-fearing man, he must have known he lied.

But after his return to Garvan, suspicion, fungus-like, grew rank in his mind with the result that a month ago he had, with infinite pains and blottings, written a letter to Katrine urging her return and immediate marriage.

Thereafter it was known that she had left Inverness.

For this milestone I thought it was only fitting to welcome back my very first guest, Gary Dingwall.

Gary spent 23 years at Royal Dornock and has recently taken on a new role as Director of Golf at Brora Golf Club.

We talk about the magic of Highland Golf, some incredible courses, Gary's new chapter at Brora and ultimately the people and experiences that make this game so special.

Let's go over to Gary.

Gary Dingwall, welcome back.

My absolute pleasure.

And things have changed a wee bit for you, Gary.

So you were at Dornock for a long, long time, but you're now director of golf at Brora.

I met Calum McSween up at Ross County.

Calum's from Brora and so him and his wife made it to the match.

It was great to meet him.

It's funny, I looked back over the notes I'd done for the phone-in all the way back to August 2024 and And I said at the time, and I've just regurgitated some of it, Rudy Gray is an experienced head coach and we've seen him make coaching mistakes which are down to that inexperience.

Yeah.

And it's probably out of... especially on that coastline of Brora, Goldsby and Dornoch, Goldsby's the least regarded of the three and it's absolutely my favourite.

I am sure, I can't be bothered scrolling this chat, I'm sure somebody just put a photo of Goldsby in today and it blew my mind how beautiful it looked.

Yeah, Goldsby's

Yeah, nice.

And over in Arran, we reckon we could probably get 10 courses done in like six days.

and doing stuff like that he's played a lot of the ones up north so that'll take a little bit of convincing for him to get him to go back up but he loves Brora because he won the open the 36 hole open so like that's one of his favourites again just but I think he had a bad round at Goldsby so again he wants to come up and kind of like make errors he liked the course but he needs like that that comeuppance yeah I can't remember if I've asked this before, but just on the, why we're doing like favourite courses and top hundreds and what's like your three favourite courses you've played? Not for any particular reason, but like what ones have kind of.

Three favourite.

Well, we'll see.

Results now at the weekend, another defeat for Turra United, but obviously I've got Brora.

I was speaking to my boy at work today, Brora, and he said that Turra were good.

Like, Brora went up early, but Turra came well into it, so...

I was 2-1 for a good while.

Yeah.