Stefan Engvall
My memory occurred 10 years ago this April. We were planning on celebrating our 10-year anniversary with a reunion trip to St Andrews but unfortunately we were stopped by a virus…
This unfortunate incident reminds me of the adventure we encountered ten years ago, which turned into one crazy but fantastic golf weekend trip with two of my mates.
It all started on Thursday morning. My trip was booked for Friday leaving from Copenhagen – destination Kingsbarns, Castle Course and the old course! I had been looking forward to this trip since I can remember. So, you can imagine my reaction when my boss told me that Thursday morning to check the news… so I did… a volcano in Iceland had grounded all planes in Europe. After speaking to the airline, it was clear there was no way any plane was leaving Copenhagen that Friday.
What should we do, what would you do? We decided if we couldn’t get there by plane, it will have to be by car. Nothing was going to stop this trip, after all we had been planning this trip for months.
We left Halmstad, Sweden, on Thursday evening and we drove non-stop to St Andrews, only stopping for a break when we were on the ferry between Denmark and Germany and then again from France to England. You could imagine, when we arrived in St Andrews, we passed out…but we woke up in time to drive down to Kingsbarns. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side ether, but your warm welcome made up for it!
We played in the rain, even though it was hitting us in every direction…the rain was coming at us side-ways… and it was so cold that I couldn’t feel my fingers.
After that, I never looked forward so much to get back inside to the warm clubhouse and have some lunch!
You felt so sorry for us and told us that the weather was likely to clear up soon so just relax and have lunch and by the time you finish just go back out and play another round! And you were right! We were so glad we took you up on that advice…we played the next round in the sunshine, and it was one of the best rounds of golf I have ever played! When we came back inside, the day was topped off – we found three bottles of Kingsbarns whisky waiting for us in recognition of the crazy trip that brought us to this town just to play golf for three days. Let me tell you that it was the best decision we made. We had a blast – no regrets!
Imagine what the ride back home was like… long!
Thank you again for making our day so special!