The Workshop · Trip Planning
Where should I base myself?
Pick the courses you want to play. We rank 35 Scottish base towns by the longest drive you’d face on any morning — and tell you where a ferry gets in the way.
What this does
Most trip advice picks the base first and the golf second. This does it the other way round: you say which of the 249 courses you actually want to play, and it works out where to sleep so that no single day starts with a two-hour drive. The ranking uses the worst leg on purpose — the average hides the morning that ruins a trip.
Every base is a place this site already knows: a town with a companion guide for the non-golfer, a base from one of the written group itineraries, or both. Drive times are estimates from the same model as the Course Finder by Drive Time; check the real route before you book anything.
Questions
- How does the base finder rank towns?
- By the worst leg, not the average. A trip is only as good as its longest morning drive, so each base is scored on the furthest course in your shortlist, with the average as the tie-break. A base that is fifteen minutes from four courses and ninety from a fifth ranks below one that is thirty from all five.
- How accurate are the drive times?
- They are estimates — straight-line distance with a Scottish road factor, rounded to five minutes, the same model the Course Finder by Drive Time uses. Single-track roads, towns at rush hour and the A9 in August all run slower than this. Treat them as a way to compare bases, then check the real route before you book.
- Why does it say 'ferry' instead of a time for some courses?
- Because a straight line across water is not a drive. If a course sits on an island and the base does not — or the other way round — the tool refuses to invent a number and tells you a ferry is in the way. Brodick serves the Arran courses and Port Ellen serves Islay; for the other islands, base yourself on the island.
- Where do the base towns come from?
- Every base is somewhere this site already covers: a town with a companion guide for non-golfers, a base used by one of the written group-trip itineraries, or both. Its map pin comes from a real source — the itinerary's own accommodation point or the town's railway station — rather than being guessed, which is why a couple of towns with guides are not offered as bases yet.