For the non-golfer in the party.

Every guide on this page covers one of Scotland's golf bases — from city centres to coastal villages to Borders market towns. Each is built around the same three-question test we'd apply to any recommendation we'd make to a friend: is it within half an hour of the course? Is it open to a casual drop-in visitor? And — the harder test — is it actually worth the afternoon to a person who came to Scotland with no particular interest in golf?

The answer is yes more often than you'd expect. Aberlady has Britain's first nature reserve on its doorstep. Cullen is the village that invented the soup. Dornoch has a 13th-century cathedral on its high street. Aberlour is a 90-minute walk through pine woods to the most-visited distillery on earth. Jedburgh's abbey has been a ruin since 1544 and is still the finest Gothic nave in Scotland. The picks in each guide are the things we'd send our own non-golfing friends to.