St Andrews

The university was founded in 1413, the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge, and its buildings are scattered through the town rather than gathered on a campus. The cathedral, consecrated in 1318, was the largest church ever built in Scotland at about a hundred and twenty metres long; it was abandoned after the Reformation and stands as gable ends and fragments in a graveyard, with St Rule's Tower beside it climbable for the view. Golf has been played on the links since the fifteenth century, and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, founded in 1754, became the body that codified the rules for most of the world; the Old Course is a public course, and anyone can walk across it on Sundays when play stops. Three long sand beaches run either side of the town.

What you actually see

• The cathedral ruin - gable ends of what was Scotland's largest church.
• St Rule's Tower - a climbable eleventh-century tower over the graveyard.
• The Old Course - a public links, walkable on Sundays when play stops.
• The scattered university - fifteenth-century buildings through the town streets.

When to go

April to October; the Open Championship returns to the Old Course periodically and fills the town entirely. Term time makes the town livelier; the summer vacation is calmer but quieter in the evenings.

Honest expectations

Playing the Old Course requires entering a ballot or booking far ahead, and is expensive. The cathedral is fragmentary and needs interpretation to read. St Rule's Tower is a tight spiral of 156 steps. Accommodation prices spike around golf events and graduations.

Nearby

The East Neuk fishing villages lie south; Dundee is across the Tay to the north.