Cruden Bay Golf Club

Cruden Bay sits on the Aberdeenshire coast 23 miles north of Aberdeen, in a small village at the mouth of the Water of Cruden where it meets the North Sea. The Great North of Scotland Railway brought holidaymakers here in the 1890s; the railway company built a grand hotel on the clifftop to receive them. The hotel closed in the 1930s, was demolished in 1952, and the ruins of its terracing are still visible on the slope above the 18th green. Old Tom Morris laid out the original course in 1899, in the same period he was working at Crail, Elie, and Carnoustie. What he found at Cruden Bay was a dune system of exceptional scale and a landscape that required almost no intervention to become golf.

The course plays through the dunes rather than around them. Fairways disappear over ridges. Green sites sit in natural amphitheatres invisible from the tee. Marker posts and, on one hole, a traditional bell-pull system indicate where the green is clear. This is not a design quirk — it is how links golf worked before the modern assumption that every hole should be visible. The 4th, a par 4 with a blind drive over a dune ridge to a fairway falling away below, defines the character of the course in one hole. First-time visitors find the blind shots disorienting. Second-time visitors find them the point.

The 14th — Whaupshank — is the photographed hole: a par 4 played from a clifftop tee back along the bay, with the ruins of Slains Castle visible on the headland to the east. Slains Castle is the ruin that Bram Stoker visited repeatedly in the 1890s while writing Dracula — he stayed at the Kilmarnock Arms in the village, walked the cliffs, and found what he needed for Transylvania on the Aberdeenshire coast. This is not a coincidence that the course trades on heavily, but it is true.

Cruden Bay has become a cult course among American golfers in particular — the ones who have already played St Andrews and Muirfield and are looking for what comes next. The cult status is deserved. The course is genuinely eccentric by the standards of modern course design, and genuinely excellent by the standards of old Scottish links. The combination is increasingly rare.

Visitor green fee is £165 in 2026 — exceptional value for a course of this pedigree. Weekend access is more limited than weekdays; booking via the club website. The Kilmarnock Arms in the village is the closest accommodation. Pair with Royal Aberdeen (40 minutes south) and Murcar (35 minutes south) for a north-east three-course tour. The drive along the coastal road from Aberdeen is worth doing in daylight.