No Golf, No Running, and No Prince William Sightings

. . . but we enjoyed our day at St. Andrews anyway. This was a house trip, so all the students and faculty went together in a couple of big buses. The neatest part of the trip was crossing the big bridge over the Firth of Forth into Fife (love to say that fast!).

As we drove into St. Andrews, it was patently clear that this was a wealthy town -- partly evidenced by the sudden increase in the number of SUVs we saw on the streets; it was also obvious that more than half of the town's population is college students and that someone very famous was visiting; the place was crawling with "secret service" types (I'm not sure what they're called here) with ear-pieces and hidden handguns, all hovering around a young blonde woman who must be someone, although none of us knew who (does Princey-poo have a girlfriend?).




Anyway, we started our tour of the town at the old castle, exploring the ruins; this castle seemed anti-climactic after Tantallon, partly because it was smaller and partly because it wasn't a cold, foggy day! It was, in fact, HOT -- highly un-Scottish weather we've been having. Anyway, the St. Andrews Castle had some interesting features, including a bottle-shaped dungeon and two mines that were dug out during a battle in the 16th century.








This is me and Cyndi (Kernahan -- pscyh faculty) outside the once-grand entrance to the castle.




Of course, sports enthusiasts among you would know that St. Andrews is far more famous for its golf course than either its castle or its university (the oldest in Scotland, established in 1416). Yes, we did see and even walk upon the Old Course and try to feel the amazement that you golfers might feel. Frankly, it was tiny! I did think about the people who were actually out there golfing (which I guess you have to sign up to do, a million years in advance) and imagine the thrill they must feel playing their game in the place where it was invented, under the gaze of the clubhouse for the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which has been around for 500 years.

Here's that historically impressive but architecturally underwhelming structure:


I suppose the man standing there must have all kinds of goose-bumps.

Here's another picture of the course, clubhouse in the distance:















And if you stand up next to the clubhouse, here's the view of the Old Course you'll get; somewhat more impressive, although the big building in the back isn't necessarily historically significant:






Of course, one thing I'd forgotten was that the beautiful West Sands beach at St. Andrews was where they filmed that slow-mo running scene from "Chariots of Fire." It really is an amazing beach, and, here, Dennis looks like he's showing it off to sell you a portion of it!
















St. Andrews also has the ruins of a really old cathedral, and that was pretty cool; you can see that the front, back, and side wall are still standing, and you can see the remainders of the other walls in the grass.

Overall, it was a nice day trip (other than the hung-over student trying not to hurl on the bus); there were lots of pastry shops, candy shops, and souvenir shops, so the town at times seemed like an up-scale Eagle River, but it was kind of exciting to be in what is so clearly a university town. While Scotland is in general a very international country and we've heard our share of languages in Edinburgh, that variety seemed even greater in St. Andrews (at lunch, we were trying to follow the table next to us as they flowed fluently back and forth between Spanish and French, and I think we saw more Americans in St. Andrews than we had in one place before).