True North

Never a Resort

But now, for the first time in many years, limited tee times at Skibo have been made available to non-members, specifically a few games each week are open for guests at a new hotel, Links House, which opened this summer. It is high-end, intimate and charming. I try to think of a less-lazy or loaded description, but there’s no escaping it. This is a boutique hotel, a brilliant boutique hotel, an indulgent retreat. It’s a much needed alternative to Skibo: somewhere very special but not impossibly private.

It has just eight bedrooms, each named after a Scottish salmon river. And the full name of the hotel is Links House at Royal Dornoch. So we think we know who this is aimed at: big game hunters, guys here to land a large fish, bag a brilliant golf course.

It’s a hotel concept which won’t be unfamiliar to those who have visited Keiser or Kohler destinations – places like Bandon Dunes and Whistling Straits – in the US. But in the UK it feels a little like the first of its kind. Gentlemen might come here and puff on something Cuban at the outdoor cigar hearth or maybe settle some bets on the practice putting green maintained by Royal Dornoch’s greenkeepers. They could happily work through some interesting malts from the excellent whisky selection, looking out over the first at Royal Dornoch where Links House is perfectly placed. But actually, it’s much less buddy-trip, backslapping or blokish than these manly refinements suggest. And guiltily I think how much my non-smoking, non-golfing, non-whisky drinking wife would like it here.

Links House is a charming 19th century home turned into a hotel. Certainly it has the necessary sporting accoutrements, the drying room, the butlers who know how to change golf spikes. But its intimate style, its antiques and open fires, have nothing to do with the clubhouse. Its fine dining is serious indeed, not pretentious or difficult, but far removed from club sandwiches named in honour of hard drinking golf pros!

It’s the perfect addition to Dornoch, a town which is an incredible golf destination, but which will never be a golf resort.