Aberdeen, Scotland Buddies Bucket List Golf Trip
Aberdeen is a quaint mid sized city on the east coast of Scotland just shy of 2 hours north of St. Andrews. Aberdeen has some excellent golf courses and if you are on the east coast of Scotland and taking enough time on your trip to Scotland to cover a couple cities then Aberdeen makes perfect sense to head to after St. Andrews. It can also make a great stop coming from Inverness to St. Andrews just about 2/3rds of the way.
Aberdeen has many granite buildings and a number of parks. Depending on where your hotel is you should be able to walk to dinner or a nearby pub. There are many nice parks and all in all it makes a very quaint destination to spend time in when you are done with a day of golf. Be sure to get a selfie with the statue of William Wallace, wander by queens cross, check out the architecture of Kings college or maybe go for a walk on Aberdeen beach. Once again, keep in mind that you will want to keep an eye on the timing of your tee times, as the restaurants don’t stay open very late— you may be better off eating at the golf courses before you head back to the hotel.
We stayed at the Mariner hotel in Aberdeen that was booked by our Golf Tour company Pioneer Golf. The hotel was an old stone facade hotel, straight forward and simple rooms. The hotel had its quirks being an old building with lots of dark wood on the interior and some funky curtain choices. The staff was really nice and helpful and they were more than happy to share ideas on pubs or restaurants to walk to nearby. Additionally, they have a small pub and restaurant on site, and they served breakfast for free. Be sure to get your own room as the rooms can be quirky and are probably not best suited for having 2 buddies to a room. There seem to be a number of hotels like this in Aberdeen, clean competent crash pads. I would be really curious how much we could have saved booking hotels on our own rather than through a golf tour company. The internet calls this a 3 star hotel, it has 4 stars on google and it looks like rooms can be come by for $71 dollars a night… I am sure we paid a premium.
There are 4 notable golf courses to play that are within a half hour drive of Aberdeen
And one on the way from Aberdeen to St. Andrews
Best Buddies Golf Trip Rankings:
- Bucket list rank (from 1to 5 buckets): 4 Buckets. Prioritize St. Andrews, but if you can do both so much the better.
- Location: 8
- Spectacle/ visual: 8
- History: 8
- New/ancient: Ancient if you do it right
- Playability : 7
- Memorability : 7
- Buddy-a-bility : 6- hotels tend to be older. Be sure to get your own room or know a lot about room amenities
- Value: I think if you book directly with the hotels here this can be a value, more so than going through a tour company.
