St Andrews deserves a top spot in the staycation league table
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
“We’ve got new restaurants, revamped hotels and our university has just trumped Oxford and Cambridge in the rankings for 2024,” beams Val Eglinton, a St Andrews-born Blue Badge Guide.
“No wonder distilleries are setting up here, posh shops are moving in and Tiger Woods wants to open a sports bar in St Andrews with Justin Timberlake.”
Eglinton is trying to convince me St Andrews is about far more than the largest public golf complex in Europe and the sport’s most famous course. She doesn’t have to. In front of us the street has been closed for the pre-St Andrews Day “Big Hoolie”. Locals and visitors alike hurl around in a mass ceilidh fuelled by a raucous live band.
“This is just like the movies about Scotland,” enthuses one visitor I’d just been chatting to from Chicago, before he was engulfed by complete strangers in a rousing Dashing White Sergeant.
A street ceilidh is the visible manifestation of the “Town and Gown” ethos that burns through this ancient Fife fulcrum. The population may not even hit 17,000 inhabitants, but St Andrews weaves in 10,000 students, extending a warm invite too to countless golfers and walkers on the new Fife Pilgrim Way seeking the eponymous saint.
Change, though, unmistakably crackles in the crisp late autumn air. I eschew the Old Course and the brace of stores sporting Royal warrants bestowed by the late Queen long before Kate and William studied here. Why just stay old school, though, when the embrace of the new tempts in a town that can have scarcely felt less Royal and Ancient? Spoiled Life sets the tone: the ground floor proffers immaculately curated vintage clothing and lifestyle pieces; upstairs, it’s Fife-roasted artisan coffee served in cups recycled from coffee husks. Very new St Andrews.
St Andrews has so much to cram in it needs a trio of main streets – North Street, Market Street and South Street. All three would have property programme producers salivating. St Andrews does not do Wetherspoons. Indeed I find Scottish brewery big guns BrewDog quiet, while the St Andrews Brewing Company is piling out pints brewed within walking distance. There is, of course, a farmers market; a monthly “makers market” too.
When they visit, Woods and Timberlake won’t be dining at McDonalds, nor Burger King. St Andrews sports neither. Instead they can enjoy views back to the Old Course and Fife lobster raviolo at the Seafood Ristorante, or savour one of Scotland’s best fish suppers at Tailend. I find independent restaurant Little Italy packed, despite just expanding, while Pizza Express next door lies half-empty.
Overlooking the Old Course, Haar was opened just before Covid hit by Dean Banks, Masterchef: The Professionals finalist, who crafts tasting menus worth tasting, awash with local produce. His smoked St Andrews Bay lobster is sublime. This is St Andrews, though, so no resting on laurels: as the “Big Hoolie” finally calms down, attention turns to Banks, who opens a new gastro bar that night called Dune. It welcomes with an evocative sign: “Where the sea hits the sky”.
With such a revered spire-studded skyline to preserve, developers don’t have the option to reach for the skies. Instead they’ve gone west. St Andrews West is a new development that will eventually see hundreds of new sustainable homes, with retail, healthcare and leisure swirled into the mix. The first phase is already open.
Were St Andrews just all glitzy and new it may not have caught the eye of Woods and Timberlake. They are keen on reinventing the B-listed art deco New Picture House as their latest upmarket T-Squared Social sports bar. It seems there is a limit, though, to the local tolerance for change at any cost, with a palpable backlash as we go to press against the redevelopment of the much-loved cinema. And talk of a petition, too.
At the plushest abode in town, the Old Course Hotel (itself planning a major revamp in 2024), concierge Niall Campbell has seen it all before: “I’ve been working here since 2008 and the old favourites of St Andrews never really change. We are unique with our history, beaches and golf. And we are still a real place. That is crucial – you cannot even play golf here on a Sunday no matter how much money you have.”
I end my visit running with more St Andrews icons along that beach Chariots of Fire-style with Douglas Clement for company. As a local golf caddie, Clement was so fed up with being asked why there was no whisky distillery that “I thought stuff it, I’ll just build my own”. He did. Kingsbarns is now releasing single malts, joining other local newbie distilleries Eden Mill and Lindores Abbey.
“Some people worry about change, but St Andrews has always reinvented itself since time immemorial,” says Clement, gazing out over the West Sands towards a North Sea view unchanged since the first round was played on the Old Course. Surfers, wild swimmers and land yachters busy the foreground.
“More than the golf, the uni or the shops, it’s the sense of authenticity, of local spirit and community, that really keeps driving people to this spectacular corner of Scotland. I hope, and think, that will never change.”
