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Troon is a time-travel wormhole to Machrihanish
Machrihanish is a legendary links course on the Kintyre Peninsula, in western Scotland. Part of the routing was created by Old Tom Morris in 1879, when what was then called the Kintyre Golf Club acquired additional land and expanded from 12 holes to 18. Machrihanish has one of the awesomest opening tee shots in golf:
The rest of the course is terrific, too. The only difficulty with Machrihanish is that it's tricky to get to. The drive from Glasgow Airport can take more than three hours, without little or no hope of golf along the way. But there's a shortcut if you do what 11 friends and I did in 2014: charter a boat from an outfit called Kintyre Express. The trip from Troon Harbor (which is just up the road from Royal Troon) to Campbeltown Harbor (which is just down the road from Machrihanish) takes 75 minutes. That means that the round trip saves you more than enough time to squeeze in one entire bonus round at either Machrihanish or Machrihanish Dunes. Here we are getting ready to set out from Troon:
And here's some of what we saw along the way:
And here's what Tony looked like when the skipper gunned his engine:
And here's what we saw as we approached Campbeltown:
And here's where we stayed, just up a long ramp from the dock:
Three days later, we took the same boat to Northern Ireland -- which is even closer to Campbeltown than Troon is. All our golf bags and suitcases went into the hold:
Kintyre Express has lots of other routes, too. The Troon-to-Campbeltown trip starts at £500 for up to 12 passengers. Thanks to Brexit, that currently works out to only about $55 a head. Kintyre also operates regular ferry service to a number of destinations in the same region. Ask for Mairi!
