When you’re not used to walking 18 and especially when you’re playing a roller-coaster golf course like Cruden Bay Golf Club in Scotland, you need a comfy place to crash. You don’t want to come off the course, cooked and grousing about blind tee shots and ball-eating gorse and have to drive an hour or more back to your digs.

Players in the Cruden Bay area could do a hell of a lot worse than staying at the Red House Hotel. It’s 1. just across the street from the course (Aulton Road, tel. +44(0) 1779 812215 ) and 2. a casual, low-key inn set up for golfers.

The Red House breakfasts keep you going and the grub in the pub is outstanding (calve’s liver with bacon and black pudding if you’ve got a hankering to go local, hot red Thai chicken curry on egg noodles if not) …. and this is coming from a guy who’s long harbored a perhap-illogical aversion to eating in hotels. I’m not even going to mention the beverages. You know what you get in a joint like this: The best ales and whiskies and ales in the world. Wait, that was a mention, wasn’t it?

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