Driving north from London, the A1 begins to tack north-east, getting nearer to the coast and the first glimpses of linksland. You leave behind the golf you play back home, whichever course city life gives you a chance to play, and you are back exploring something older and plainer, where the wind and the sea decide what you're allowed to do with a golf ball.

But a trip like this was never really about the driving north. What a tour actually gives you is what opens up along the way. A round with someone you'd only met once before, an evening that runs later than planned. Sometimes a course that quietly rewrites what you thought this game was for. We choose the places. The places, in turn, write the trip.

Arrival

Kilspindie and Edinburgh

We gathered on day one at Kilspindie on the Firth of Forth. Compact, clever golf that brought the group together before the trip properly began. That evening, Edinburgh. A pint at Kay's Bar, then dinner at Noto, with no analysis of the day's round and the low hum of a city that has quietly underwritten the game for centuries. Early the next morning, we set off for the Highlands.

MAIN TOUR

Moray Old

North of Inverness, the tour proper began at Moray Old in Lossiemouth. Old Tom Morris ground, understated and utterly convincing. Tight fairways lined by gorse, greens that demand precision over power. The round rewards patience. The wind was up and the jets from RAF Lossiemouth roared overhead as our first full test got underway. It's the kind of course that doesn't announce itself. There's no dramatic backdrop and little reputation beyond golf circles, but you leave it understanding exactly why Old Tom's routing decisions are still being studied more than a century on.

Royal Dornoch

Then Royal Dornoch, the course that shaped Donald Ross and, by extension, half of American golf. Nothing about it needs defending. The plateau greens and the sheer isolation of the place make Dornoch one of the purest tests in the game, and playing it always feels a little like an audience. There's a particular quiet that settles over a group here, somewhere around the turn, when you realise you're walking ground that has shaped how golf is played and thought about everywhere else. Few courses earn that kind of reverence without trying.

Castle Stuart

Castle Stuart brought a different register entirely. Modern and dramatic, it's Gil Hanse given the most brilliant parcel of land, with the Moray Firth stretched out before you and the changing sky visible for miles. Wide fairways invite you to swing freely, right up until the wind and the framing of each hole remind you that freedom here comes with conditions. It's a course built for spectacle, and it earns that description honestly. Every tee shot feels staged by the land itself.

Old Petty

We closed the tour at Old Petty, next door to Castle Stuart but a different animal. More restrained and more strategic, it's carved through gorse and heather with the firth still glinting in the background. It's Tom Doak's third and newest course in the British Isles, and it shows. After a tour that had tested every part of the game, this was a quieter, more cerebral finish, a course that asks you to think your way round.

Hospitality

We based ourselves at Farr House, our Highland headquarters for the main tour. After the road-worn arrival day it was a welcome contrast, with proper rest and good breakfasts. The evenings there turned a group of golfers into a team.

Closing Thoughts

A trip like this is never really finished by the last putt. The rounds stay with you, and so do the friendships that got built along the way, in car rides and over long dinners. And something else too: a new relationship with a place and with the people who've played this same ground for generations before you turned up with your golf bag.

That's what we're really building at Recent Golf. We take people somewhere, but the places themselves, chosen carefully, do the real work of writing the trip. The Highlands gave us that in full this year, and we know we've barely scratched the surface of what this stretch of coast has to offer. So we're not waiting long to find out what we missed. We're already booked in to return next year.