Insch Golf Club

Insch Golf Club is a story about a village that refused to stay without golf. The game was first recorded here before the First World War on a course around Dunnideer Hill, moved to roughly its present ground in 1923 — and then vanished in 1940 when the War Department seconded the land as a grenade range. It took until 1977 for a committee to form and put that right: a nine-hole course was built by voluntary labour along the Valentine Burn and reopened for play in 1982, the clubhouse assembled in 1987 from the remnants of a school's temporary accommodation. Twelve new holes on the slopes of Dunnideer, started in 1995, took it to eighteen — officially opened on 28 June 1997.

The card reads par 69 at 5,388 yards off the whites with a slope of 117, and the design brief for the extension was the same as the original: parkland golf for all abilities, routed around undulating terrain with water and trees used cleverly rather than cruelly. The setting under Dunnideer — with its hilltop fort ruin — is the backdrop for most of the round, and the modern clubhouse that replaced the school-hut original in April 2004 was opened by Paul Lawrie, complete with an hour-long coaching session for eighty club juniors.

Visitors are welcome every day, and the club has the silverware to prove the welcome is real — its hospitality awards are the sort voted on by people who actually turned up. The fee structure is refreshingly simple: £40 Monday to Thursday and £45 Friday to Sunday through the summer, £20 any day through the winter, booked online through the club's visitor system. Forty minutes from Aberdeen up the A96, it makes an easy detour on any east-coast run — and the outing testimonials the club reprints go on about the catering at length, which locals will tell you is no accident.