Golfing at Lochranza
Set on the north-facing glen of a Scottish island that attracts abnormally high amounts of rainfall, the village of Lochranza is perhaps best known for having the least sunshine of any community in the United Kingdom. But on the day my brother-and-law and I decided to golf there, we played in shine and shadow on squishy green grass, tackling a Par 34, 9-hole course bisected by a river and surrounded by a horseshoe of mountains. The starting holes aimed at a ruined gray castle on a peninsula extending into the loch that gives its name to the village. Red squirrels chased each other at the edge of a deer forest. Red stags rested, ate and lumbered among divots at various fairways, the slow-moving creatures obviously used to the hackers that chewed up the course before they did. A golden eagle soared in lazy ovals over the blue-green northern mountains (it was the closest I would get to an eagle all day). Gray seals basked on rocks, soaking in the sunlight that glittered off Lochranza Bay. All that was missing was a double-rainbow and some fairy gold.
Armed with a few battered, rented clubs and dented putter, I played the best nine holes of my life – one birdie, four pars, two bogies and a double-bogey, putting me only 3 over for the 9 holes. I’m not sure what deserves credit for my temporary competence – stag magic, elf charm, the healing sleep of the Scottish sea air – but it felt as if I had conjured the spirit of the first golfers, who played back in the day when this country was overrun with trolls and giants. For it is generally accepted, especially in these parts, that golf was invented in Scotland by wayward shepherds who – when they weren’t herding sheep, sketching landscapes, whittling wood, carving bone, strumming the lyre, playing the flute, composing pastoral poetry, counting cloud animals or daydreaming about nothing in particular – picked up a curved stick and whacked a pebble among the green hills, sand dunes and rabbit runs of their villages, marking haphazard progress until the stone disappeared down a mole hole.
One of the holes on the rather unimaginatively named Lochranza Golf Course had a standing stone, a remnant from the Bronze Age, but merely an ancient hazard if, as a right-hander, you sliced your drive. Dozens of sheep grazed in the rough and the fairways, even occasionally out of bounds. The golf course shares its lease with the village’s lone sheep farmer, so the woolen ruminants lamb and eat the grass in spring before heading up into the hills as the year progresses. The sheep served the purpose of mowers and groomers, although their appetite and the wet weather conspired to give the course a somewhat beat-up appearance.
“What do the rules of golf say about striking a red deer,” asked one visitor to the course. But even amateur golfers like Robert and I know that natural hazards are part of the game, in which case, whether you make contact with flank or antlers, you play the ball where it lies. I once had a muskrat move one of my stray shots from the muddy fringe of a water hazard to a playable lie closer to the hole, and I’ve had several varieties of deciduous trees turn slices and hooks into middle-of-the-fairway drives. So, in golf, as with most human pursuits, the ability to have a healthy respect and love for nature seems to improve your karma with the wild things.
Lawn Bowls at Lamlash
It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful setting for a game of bowls. Poised on the eastern edge of the Arran coast, overlooking the Firth of Clyde, with Holy Isle providing a dramatic background, the Lamlash Bowling Club is shaped like a polished emerald, where games of flat-green bowls are played on well-groomed rinks to the sound of waves and the scent of the sea air.
Robert and I spent an entire afternoon in the green box, bowling from one end to another, in a prolonged game to 21, comforted by salty sea breezes, interrupted only by the sharp punctuation of herring gulls fighting over the same cracked shells. I had an advantage, having the genetic benefit of a South African great-grandfather, who either bowled for or managed the national team (the historical records are unclear; he was a bowler, but whether he was a bowler of note is still open to speculation). We had the club to ourselves for the duration. The locker rooms, open to the public, provided shoes in all sizes and several collections of biased balls, along with the jack (or kitty) that serves as a target.
Like the sport of golf, lawn bowls has a distinctly Scottish pedigree. A Glasgow cotton merchant named William Wallace Mitchell is credited with clarifying the rules of the modern game in his “Manual of Bowl Playing” in 1864. Also like golf (and football), lawn bowls was banned by various kings of England for interfering with the greater military need for more competent archers.
Our match seemed to last forever, and that was fine with us. It was a timeless sort of day. A scenic illustration from 1903 from a book titled “The Victorians and Edwardians at Play” depicts starched suit-clad doppelgangers of Robert and me from more than a century ago – just two men on a glorious summer’s day, bowling at Lamlash. The only difference, other than the period fashion (contrasting with our Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps), was the site of a Clyde steamer tied up at the pier and several of the Royal Navy’s battleships lying at anchor just offshore.
Clams Got Legs 