A Full Day at Turnberry

Ailsa Craig from Turnberry Resort
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June 6- I was awakened to the sound of the sheep, we have quite a group outside our room in the field next door.

Gary met up with the three of the men he met Monday night for nine holes of golf at eight a.m. and then met up with his group for the tournament at 10:40. They played the Ailsa Course which is the oldest of the courses at Turnberry. I spent most of the day exploring mostly on foot.

...were escorted by a playing bagpiper

Our noisy neighbors... not really
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At six, there was a whiskey tasting at the clubhouse for the people involved with the tournament. That's not my favorite but I went anyway... :-). It was very interesting and they even let us sample from a bottle of 44 year old Glenfiddich - Wow! - It costs $2000. per bottle ( of the 44 yr old)....

Afterwards we went to the main hotel and were escorted by a playing bagpiper to the Caledonia Room for a special Gaelic dinner. We started the meal with Cuttle Skank... sounds yucky but was really a very tasty fish soup (Gary even liked it :-). Then over the next three hours we had many other tasty treats including a wonderful lamb dish and we ended the meal with coffee and whiskey fudge (though I couldn't taste the whiskey).

Everybody's wish to come back!
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Iona, who works for Sun Microsystems in Scotland and helped put on this wonderful event then explained which charities the tournament was funding and why. The three were the cancer wing at the Children's Hospital in Glasgow, the Cancer Research of the U.K., and Children of Chernobyl. At that point they has made over 70,000 British pounds (which is around $140,000) and I'm sure it was more by the end of the evening.

Also, Sandy Lyle had played his four rounds of golf (I heard the helicopter early & saw him fly back mid- afternoon) and he was done by a little after six. We all left the whiskey tasting long enough to cheer him and the people that were playing with him on at his last hole of the day. He had started playing golf at 5 a.m. and he was at dinner with us.. impressive.

The weather has been just lovely - sunny, about 70-75 degrees with only a slight breeze. Several people mentioned that we must have brought the good weather from California to which all I could do was smile.... :-)