St Andrews Holiday Estate

Come rain or shine, there’s a veritable host of things to do around St Andrews, with the added bonus for golf widow/ers of feeling smug on soggy days when no golf is possible. (You’ll probably have to go to the British Golf Museum instead, but trade that for a day’s shopping.) St Andrews is well worth a potter around even for non-golfers: 13th-century Holy Trinity Parish Church and the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral and clifftop St Andrews Castle are pulls for thousands of visitors every year. And as it’s a student centre, you’ll be well sorted for festivals, theatre, live music and other sophistication, with plenty of pubs and a couple of spas for chilling out. Around the region, St Andrews Holiday Estate is only a few miles from many popular beaches: West Sands, the two-mile length of sand used in Those Scenes in Chariots of Fire, runs adjacent to St Andrews Links, and Fife as a whole has five of Scotland’s seven Blue Flag winners. If you’re holidaying with the kids, they can learn or polish their cantering skills at the horse riding school just outside town. For rainy days, East Sands Leisure Centre has a pool and flumes to splash around in and the New Picture House Cinema shows kid-friendly films every day in school holidays.