Ullapool Golf Club

Ullapool's is one of Scotland's youngest courses — established in 1998, which surprises visitors who assume every Highland town has had its nine holes since Victoria. The course runs along the mouth of the Ullapool River where it meets Loch Broom, and all three of the local geography's big features get into the game: river, loch and beach are live hazards, and the hole names — An Teallach, Loch Broom, Summer Isles — read like the view from each tee. Two loops make a par 70 of around 5,400 yards, the front nine playing 2,699 yards at par 35.

It is a walk-on course in the proper sense: £40 buys the day, juniors pay £25, and if nobody is in the clubhouse café you pay by QR code or drop cash in the honesty box. The club's reciprocal arrangement gives its members access to twenty-six other Highland courses, which says something about how the far north's clubs survive — cooperatively.

For NC500 drivers it is the natural overnight stop between Gairloch's nine and the Durness headland, in a town with actual restaurants and the ferry to Stornoway. Pack the clubs; the day ticket means an evening loop after dinner costs nothing extra.