Go west for unspoilt beaches and a golf course for the ages

To the left the unmistakeable Sgurr of Eigg; to the right, Skye’s jagged Cuillins; between the two, rising above a white-sand beach and deep blue sea, the hump-backed outline of Rum. “My dad liked to make golfers look at the view,” David Shaw Stewart, co-owner of mainland Britain’s most westerly golf course, said. “I think he succeeded.”
He certainly did. I almost forgave him when my putt on the giddy slopes of the first green rolled agonisingly past the hole and continued to gather pace. Who can be curmudgeonly about a missed stroke or two when nature provides such a jaw-dropping panorama?
It was a glad-to-be-alive day on the quirkily charming Traigh Golf Course, just three miles up the old coast Road to the Isles from the Morar village of Arisaig. If there’s a more dramatic golfing backdrop in Britain than this spectacular spot one hour west of Fort William, I have yet to find it.
The Shaw Stewarts have been resident at Traigh since the 1940s when it was run as a dairy farm. The main farmhouse, Traigh House, overlooking the Silver Sands of Morar — a string of pristine, unspoilt beaches — was requisitioned by the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War as a training base for Czech commandos. Their only complaint was a family of noisy pine martens nesting in the roof space.
Stationed 80-odd years later in the bothy, one of three former farm buildings grouped around a grassy knoll facing the sea that the Shaw Stewarts refurbished as part of their Traigh Holidays self-catering venture, we experienced no such intrusions.
The bothy is a seaside cottage with sand-coloured walls, a cosy book-lined lounge, a well-equipped kitchen and a view of the Small Isles from the bedroom upstairs. A 100-yard stroll to the four-mile coastal path that links Arisaig to Camusdarach (used for some of the beach scenes in Local Hero), it is the perfect base for exploring what this area does best; lazy, beachcombing days on picture-perfect shorelines.
Turning towards Camusdarach from Traigh, we cut down through ancient lichen-covered trees out of a Lord of the Rings scene, past an old boathouse and onto a powdery horseshoe of bleached sand. On a rare windless day, the only sound was the gentle lapping waves. Parked up against a rock radiating the sun’s heat, we spread our picnic and dined on both our sandwiches and an uninterrupted seascape of dramatic islands rising from the Sound of Rum. When the west coast of Scotland is like this, it is incomparable.
• Walk of the week: Arisaig to Camusdarach beach
Rousing ourselves from after-lunch torpor, we headed north along deserted beaches and grassy tracks into a warren-like dune system. Our only company was the occasional dog walker, a handful of paddleboarders, kayakers and wild swimmers.
Back at the Bothy we ventured out into the knoll that also fronts Traigh Beach House and Traigh Cottage, joining fellow guests on garden chairs for cocktails and one of the most mesmerising sunsets I have witnessed.
So what to do when not sipping cocktails and soaking up sunsets? Well, if those shimmering islands call to you, there are ferries to Eigg, Muck, Rum and Canna from Arisaig or Mallaig, a working port with its ever-increasing array of fish restaurants, seven miles up the coast.
For me, however, what could be called “wild golf” beckoned. Traigh Golf Course, on land neighbouring the old farmstead, has been labelled the “most beautiful golf course anywhere in the world” by one influential golf magazine and ranked amongst the top 50 nine-holers in the world by another.
Until the 1990s it was part of the Shaw Stewart’s sheep farm with a sprinkling of greens protected from grazing animals by fences. But Shaw Stewart’s father, Jack, called in the Scottish golf architect John Salvesen to extend it and make better use of a site ascending steeply from the machair fringing the coastline.
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To call the course a challenge would be a serious understatement. There are tee shots up steep banks (Captain’s Caper), long drives over gorse (Spion Kop), crisp strikes (hopefully) over tidal inlets and tricky approaches to elevated greens with alarming run-offs for misdirected strikes (McEachen’s Leap). Balls will be lost and blood pressure may rise but most who play it — and they come from all around the world — agree it is all-out fun.
If all goes wrong, chuck the clubs down, take a seat and, as Shaw Stewart’s father advised, simply take in what is laid out in front of you. Nature’s way of soothing brows is par for the course here.Jeremy Watson was a guest of Traigh Holidays traighholidays.co.uk. The Bothy (sleeps two) costs £1,365 a week. Traigh Golf (traighgolf.co.uk) costs £30 for a day ticket