Thurso Golf Club

Thurso Golf Club sits at latitude 58.6 degrees north — one of the most northerly 18-hole courses on mainland Scotland, roughly on the same latitude as the southern tip of Greenland. Founded 1893 in Caithness, the flattest and most treeless county in Scotland: a plateau of flagstone, peat, and pasture that drops to the Pentland Firth. The course occupies parkland at the edge of Thurso, the main settlement of the far north and the departure point for CalMac ferries to Orkney.

Par 69, around 5,800 yards on the Caithness plateau. The terrain is flatter than most Highland courses — Caithness is not the Highlands in any topographic sense. What the course provides instead of elevation is exposure: the wind off the Pentland Firth reaches Thurso with little to slow it, and a Caithness summer gale is a different proposition from a coastal breeze further south. The course has been shaped by this reality over 130 years.

Visitor green fee is £20–30. Most visitors come to Thurso for the Pentland Firth crossing to Orkney — Skara Brae, Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar. The golf club serves those who want a round before or after the ferry, or those making the 100-mile drive from Inverness who want to break the journey with golf. Golspie (50 miles south) and Brora (55 miles south) are the nearest Highland links alternatives for those building a northern circuit.