Golf Course Architecture - Issue 64, April 2021

19 A new links course is being planned for a duneland site next to the Cromarty Firth, about fifteen miles south of Dornoch. Landowner Robert Mackenzie has recently submitted a request for a Scoping Opinion (a precursor to submitting a full planning application) to the local authority, Highland Council. The Mackenzie family has farmed the land around the site for 150 years, producing, among other things, Britain’s most northerly cold pressed rapeseed oil, which it markets under the Cullisse brand, but only bought the site in question two years ago. It is located next to the Port of Nigg, which is an important facility for servicing Scotland’s offshore North Sea oil industry and also next to the northern terminal of the historic Cromarty-Nigg ferry, which, until the building of the Cromarty Bridge in the mid-seventies, was the main route for accessing the far north of Scotland. Critically, and unlike the recent Scottish links developments at Machrihanish Dunes and Trump Golf International (and the rejected Photo: Robert Mackenzie