Post by Trusevich on Dec 3, 2018 22:53:28 GMT -5
Earl Harald's Folly, now released for public acclaim critique. Par 72, three tee sets, four pin positions, soft, fast greens, moderate fairways.
TL;DR version:
Vikings! Treachery! Death! Golf!
Viking geezer died in a fight in Scotland back in the olden days. A shrine, then a mausoleum was built to commemorate him. Then someone else moved to the USA and builds his own version - a tribute - andfor some reason, a golf course.
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Full Version:
The Battle of Claredon Hill in 1196 begins our ramble.
Earl Harald (the Younger), learning that his uncle Harald (the Elder) was about to usurp him and claim control of the Northern Isles of Orkney, Shetland and mainland Caithness for himself, took umbrage and with the help of many locals sympathetic to his judicous and fair-minded governship, engaged Harald the Elder in fierce and catastrophic battle at Claredon on the far north coast of Scotland.
Early in the skirmish, Earl Harald the Younger was slain, his townspeople army scattered and fled for their lives (mostly unsuccessfully) and the despicable and hated Harald the Elder took control of the North.
Unbowed, the locals created a shrine to their beloved Harald on the spot whence he fell. In time, a chapel was built and dedicated to him in the same place. It was used for some hundreds of years before eventually falling into disuse and disrepair long after the Vikings had dispersed back to Scandinavia or integrated fully with the locals, as they often did.
The chapel is chronicled in both "The Orkneyinga Saga" and "Torfeus".
In the mid-18th century, certainly before 1780, Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster famously created the distictive Sinclair family Mausoleum on the site of the Battle Of Claredon Hill and dedicated it to the memory of Earl Harald the Younger. Harald's Tower stands there to this day.
A few years later, Sir John's distant cousin Tollemache, having fled the Highlands after suffering severe oppression by government forces for openly displaying rebellious Jacobite influences, found himself in the simple arboreal solitude of the foothills of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, where he built a smallholding and concentrated on his two passions - isolation and golf.
Using his meagre family inheritances he bought a tract of surrounding forest and set about his task. In what seemed like seven years he had single-handedly, with absolutely no previous experience and only a modest ability to control the tools available to him - as will become clear - created a rolling 18 hole golf course around the hilly terrain, broken by a freshwater forest lake system that is still used today for fishing and recreational sailing by the few locals.
Although old age was fast approaching for Sinclair, he took pride in looking after the greens and fairways, mowing and rolling using hand tools and no small amount of staunch effort.
(The course today is maintained by pixies and elves of the forest, or some other type of fantastical magic I haven't made up yet to fit the enigmatic and incomprehesibly obtuse narrative.)
Tollemache Sinclair's last project was to create a homage to his own now distant family's ties to Earl Harald - which he named Earl Harald's Folly. A grandiose, pompous, architecturally amateurish replica of the original mausoleum, it stands still as an out-of-place, out-of-time feature in a totally unsuitable and foreign landscape, completely cut off from all and sundry.
Records of the time make numerous mention of the comments of the scattered and sparse local population on completion of this intrusion into their lansdscape. Mostly negative, it has to be said:
"It's clearly his first shot at building a golf course," one elderly widow said. "There aren't even any cart paths, despite golf carts not being invented yet!"
Another disgruntled homesteader said: "All the fairways seem random and the bunkers never seem to be in play. What was he thinking about?" while another opined "And what's with that stupid folly? It's off-centre and there don't appear to be any foundations built. It'll fall down in a few years, mark my words!"
Tollemache Sinclair played out the rest of his life in obscurity on his beloved golf course, despite not once being quite able to score an under par round.
Some people even now wonder if Sinclair had the first clue about what he was doing, or even more unfathomably, why.
--------------------
It's my first ever completed course, hope you enjoy. Let me know where I've gone wrong.
TL;DR version:
Vikings! Treachery! Death! Golf!
Viking geezer died in a fight in Scotland back in the olden days. A shrine, then a mausoleum was built to commemorate him. Then someone else moved to the USA and builds his own version - a tribute - andfor some reason, a golf course.
-------------------------------------
Full Version:
The Battle of Claredon Hill in 1196 begins our ramble.
Earl Harald (the Younger), learning that his uncle Harald (the Elder) was about to usurp him and claim control of the Northern Isles of Orkney, Shetland and mainland Caithness for himself, took umbrage and with the help of many locals sympathetic to his judicous and fair-minded governship, engaged Harald the Elder in fierce and catastrophic battle at Claredon on the far north coast of Scotland.
Early in the skirmish, Earl Harald the Younger was slain, his townspeople army scattered and fled for their lives (mostly unsuccessfully) and the despicable and hated Harald the Elder took control of the North.
Unbowed, the locals created a shrine to their beloved Harald on the spot whence he fell. In time, a chapel was built and dedicated to him in the same place. It was used for some hundreds of years before eventually falling into disuse and disrepair long after the Vikings had dispersed back to Scandinavia or integrated fully with the locals, as they often did.
The chapel is chronicled in both "The Orkneyinga Saga" and "Torfeus".
In the mid-18th century, certainly before 1780, Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster famously created the distictive Sinclair family Mausoleum on the site of the Battle Of Claredon Hill and dedicated it to the memory of Earl Harald the Younger. Harald's Tower stands there to this day.
A few years later, Sir John's distant cousin Tollemache, having fled the Highlands after suffering severe oppression by government forces for openly displaying rebellious Jacobite influences, found himself in the simple arboreal solitude of the foothills of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, where he built a smallholding and concentrated on his two passions - isolation and golf.
Using his meagre family inheritances he bought a tract of surrounding forest and set about his task. In what seemed like seven years he had single-handedly, with absolutely no previous experience and only a modest ability to control the tools available to him - as will become clear - created a rolling 18 hole golf course around the hilly terrain, broken by a freshwater forest lake system that is still used today for fishing and recreational sailing by the few locals.
Although old age was fast approaching for Sinclair, he took pride in looking after the greens and fairways, mowing and rolling using hand tools and no small amount of staunch effort.
(The course today is maintained by pixies and elves of the forest, or some other type of fantastical magic I haven't made up yet to fit the enigmatic and incomprehesibly obtuse narrative.)
Tollemache Sinclair's last project was to create a homage to his own now distant family's ties to Earl Harald - which he named Earl Harald's Folly. A grandiose, pompous, architecturally amateurish replica of the original mausoleum, it stands still as an out-of-place, out-of-time feature in a totally unsuitable and foreign landscape, completely cut off from all and sundry.
Records of the time make numerous mention of the comments of the scattered and sparse local population on completion of this intrusion into their lansdscape. Mostly negative, it has to be said:
"It's clearly his first shot at building a golf course," one elderly widow said. "There aren't even any cart paths, despite golf carts not being invented yet!"
Another disgruntled homesteader said: "All the fairways seem random and the bunkers never seem to be in play. What was he thinking about?" while another opined "And what's with that stupid folly? It's off-centre and there don't appear to be any foundations built. It'll fall down in a few years, mark my words!"
Tollemache Sinclair played out the rest of his life in obscurity on his beloved golf course, despite not once being quite able to score an under par round.
Some people even now wonder if Sinclair had the first clue about what he was doing, or even more unfathomably, why.
--------------------
It's my first ever completed course, hope you enjoy. Let me know where I've gone wrong.