Hop Scotch - I

We had a grandstand view of Tiger Woods as he hit a magnificent drive down the fairway, followed by Vijay Singh. Bunny and I were taking in the British Open Golf Championship at St Andrews, the oldest golf course in the world, a 90-minute drive from Edinburgh. The sun beamed down on the undulating green of the links, scattered with a galaxy of stars.Wasn't that Greg Norman there, holing a 20-foot putt? And there was Colin Montgomerie, blasting his way out of a sandtrap he'd landed in. Fortunately for the players, starting with Tiger who ended winning the tournament, there wasn't even the ghost of a presence of James VI of Scotland (James I of England). For his Royal Majesty had a sore aversion to 'gowf', as it was then spelt; he believed that it distracted his troops from archery practice and had the game banned. Fortunately, the proscription didn't last long and gowf ��� said to have been invented in or around St Andrews in the latter 15th century ��� went on to achieve the global status it enjoys today of a quasi-religious cult.
I'm not at all surprised that the Scots invented golf. Whack about with weirdly shaped sticks to drive a small ball over acres of ground to put it in a succession of holes only slightly larger than the projectile itself? Who else but a Scot would have devised such a thing? Perhaps because theirs is such a small country (with a population less than half that of Delhi's), the Scots are hugely inventive. Who but a Scot would have thought of fermenting grain and distilling the resultant mash to produce a globally toasted beverage of which more bottles are said to be sold in India alone (thanks to India's own spirit of entrepreneurship) than are ever produced in Scotland?
Not surprisingly then, Edinburgh's principal thoroughfare, Princes Street, is the most spectacular high street ever invented. Lining one side are hotels and offices and stores, and on the other the land swoops down into a valley as sudden as an exclamation and rises again to become a man-made massif of weathered stone dominated by the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. It's a walkers' city and you can walk the Royal Mile from the castle, through the narrow lanes of Old Town, to Holyrood Palace, once the seat of Mary, Queen of Scots. Hard by the historic palace is the ultra-modern Scottish parliament, symbol of Scotland's once and (who knows?) future sovereignty.
We could have explored Edinburgh for a month. We had one evening. What do you like? asked Norma, our guide. Pubs, said Bunny decidedly. Good, said Norma. Along with art galleries and museums, Edinburgh also has excellent pubs, which are not just watering-holes but centres of social and cultural interaction. We tried the Cafe Royal around the corner from Princes Street, and the Dome on George Street, a truly splendiferous establishment with a glass dome, housed in a former bank. A must on any Edinburgh itinerary. And ask for the McEwan 70, a smooth, mellow ale with just the right head of foam.
The next morning, Norma drove us north and west. Past Stirling Castle, scene of many a battle between the Scots and the English, past the burial site of Rob Roy Macgregor (remember Liam Neeson in the film?), and around the edge of Loch Lomond which together with Loch Ness (home of the world's most beloved monster, Nessie) claims to be Scotland's largest loch, pronounced lokh, which means lake. We enter the Trossachs, the beginning of the Highlands. The rugged hills rise around us, giants rearing from the earth, burly shoulders bruised purple with heather. There seems an immensity of rock and sky and light. A thought strikes me. Was the first golf course devised to capture this grandeur in miniature, a map so to speak of not just the physical landscape, but of the great heart and soul of Scotland itself?