St. Andrews Old Course Scotland

St. Andrews: What Golfers Already Know and What Everyone Else Is Missing

St. Andrews is a small university town on the east coast of Fife, facing the cold grey North Sea, with one of the oldest universities in the English-speaking world (founded 1413) and the most famous golf course on earth. Most visitors come for the golf. A significant number leave without realising that the cathedral ruins, the coastal walking, and the town itself are better than the golf publicity makes them sound.

The Old Course

Golf has been played on the links here in some form since the 15th century; the first written reference is a 1552 document confirming the townspeople’s right to play. The Old Course is a public course managed by a trust along with six others in the St Andrews Links complex.

The green fee for 2025 was set at GBP 320 per round (approximately USD 400). Half of all tee times are available through the ballot system. To enter: submit names, home club, and handicap certificates before 2pm, two days before the day you want to play. Results post at 4pm the same day. The success rate varies – around 30% during spring and declining to 15-20% in autumn during local competitions. If you get a ballot slot, the odds improve significantly in March and April before the peak summer crowds arrive.

On Sundays, the course closes for play and opens as a public promenade. You can walk the fairways, and on the 18th you can stand on the Swilcan Bridge – the most famous structure in golf – without a green fee. This is not a consolation prize; walking the course on a Sunday morning before the town wakes up is one of the better free experiences in Scottish tourism.

The Cathedral

The Cathedral of St Andrews was founded in 1158, consecrated in 1318, and was the largest cathedral in Scotland until the Reformation in the 1560s effectively ended its use. It was then systematically stripped of useful building materials by local residents over several centuries, which is less an act of vandalism than an entirely rational response to an empty building of dressed stone. What remains are two gable ends, a section of nave wall, and the surrounding graveyard. Historic Environment Scotland manages the site.

The museum inside holds Pictish carved stones, medieval grave slabs, and an 11th-century sarcophagus of a Pictish king – one of the finest examples of Pictish art still in Scotland. St Rule’s Tower, a complete Romanesque structure predating the cathedral, is climbable for 33 metres and 150 steps. The views from the top are the best in the town. Entry costs around £9.

The West Sands

West Sands beach runs north from the town for about two kilometres. The opening sequence of Chariots of Fire (1981) was filmed here – the shot of runners training on an expanse of open beach with the town behind them. Walking the full length and back takes about 90 minutes and gives you a physical sense of why the links land adjacent developed as it did: flat, thin-grassed, sand-underlain, dried by constant sea breeze.

Day Trips Worth Making

The Anstruther Fish Bar, 14 kilometres south of St Andrews, is consistently rated among the best fish and chip restaurants in Scotland. The queue at lunchtime is 20-30 minutes. It earns the reputation.

Kingsbarns Distillery, 12 kilometres south near the coastal village of Kingsbarns, was founded in 2015 and produces a Lowland-style single malt. Tours run daily with tastings. The distillery overlooks the coast and the Kingsbarns Golf Links; the setting is better than most distillery tours manage.

The Fife Coastal Path walk south from St Andrews through Kingsbarns to Crail, about 12 kilometres, passes sea cliffs and fishing villages. Crail has one of Scotland’s most photographed harbours and a fish bar selling fresh crab claws when in season.

Getting There

St Andrews has no railway station. The nearest is Leuchars, about 10 minutes by taxi or the 94 bus. Edinburgh to Leuchars takes about an hour by train; driving from Edinburgh is 55 minutes.