St Andrews has a reputation for being expensive, and for golf and accommodation it is. Everything else is remarkably cheap or free: three kilometres of beach, the oldest golf course in the world — which you can walk across — a six-hundred-year-old university with free museums, a medieval town plan and a coastal path running through the middle of it.
West Sands — three kilometres of flat firm sand from the Old Course to the Eden estuary, backed by dunes. Free, enormous, and the beach from the opening of Chariots of Fire.
East Sands — smaller and more sheltered, below the cathedral by the harbour.
Castle Sands — a cove below the castle with a natural rock pool cut into the shelf, where students swim at dawn on the first of May.
This is the thing visitors do not realise. The Old Course is public common land owned by the town, not a private club, and there are public rights of way across it. It is also closed to golf on Sundays, when it becomes, in effect, a park — and walking across the most famous golf course in the world on a Sunday afternoon is a St Andrews institution.
The Swilcan Bridge on the eighteenth, the small stone arch that every Open champion has been photographed on, is free to walk to and stand on. So is the eighteenth green in front of the R&A clubhouse, and the view back down the fairway.
Watching the golf costs nothing either — the first tee is a public spectacle and there is usually a small crowd.
The oldest university in Scotland, founded in 1413, and its buildings are the town.
St Salvator’s Quad on North Street and St Mary’s Quad on South Street are both open to walk into, and both are beautiful — St Mary’s has a holm oak and a thorn tree said to have been planted by Mary, Queen of Scots.
The Wardlaw Museum on The Scores is the university’s own museum and is free, with the medieval maces, scientific instruments, art and a rooftop terrace over the bay.
The Bell Pettigrew Museum is a Victorian natural history collection, free, with limited opening.
In term time the town fills with students in red gowns, which are worn to chapel and on the Pier Walk on Sunday mornings — a procession out along the harbour pier and back that has been going for a very long time and is free to watch.
St Andrews Cathedral and St Andrews Castle both charge for entry, but a good deal of both is visible for nothing: the cathedral precinct and graveyard are open, the west front and the east gable stand at the end of South Street, and the castle’s outer walls and the view from the cliff path cost nothing.
Blackfriars Chapel on South Street is a free-standing ruined chancel in a garden, free and open.
The West Port, the sixteenth-century town gate at the top of South Street, is one of the few surviving burgh gates in Scotland.
The Martyrs’ Monument on The Scores commemorates the Protestants burned here in the sixteenth century.
The Botanic Garden charges a modest entry, but Craigtoun Country Park, four kilometres out, is free to enter — an Edwardian estate park with a lake, woodland and formal gardens, with only the boats, railway and attractions charged.
Kinburn Park, Lade Braes — a wooded walk along the Kinness Burn from the town out towards Cockshaugh Park — and the Kinness Burn paths are all free and are what the town’s own residents use.
The Fife Coastal Path runs through St Andrews and is free for its entire 187 kilometres.
South towards Kinkell Ness, the Rock and Spindle sea stack and Kingsbarns — cliffs, caves and rock platforms with almost nobody on them.
North across the Eden estuary to Tentsmuir, where a large seal colony hauls out on the sands. This is one of the best free wildlife sights in eastern Scotland.
The Eden Estuary Nature Reserve is free and is among the better bird sites on this coast.
The university’s calendar throws up a good deal that is free to watch: the Pier Walk on Sunday mornings in term, Raisin Monday in November — an alarming, foam-strewn student tradition in St Salvator’s Quad — and the May Dip at dawn on the first of May, when students run into the North Sea at Castle Sands.
The town also hosts the Open Championship every five years or so and the Dunhill Links each October, and while the Open is ticketed, the town during it is a free spectacle in itself.
Accommodation, mainly, and golf if you play. Parking is charged in the centre but the town is small enough to leave the car on the edge and walk everywhere.
Leuchars station, ten kilometres west, has two trains an hour from Edinburgh with connecting buses, and the bus network reaches the East Neuk and Dundee — so a car-free stay works well.
Walk out along West Sands first thing, then back across the Old Course to the Swilcan Bridge and the eighteenth green. Through the town along North Street and into St Salvator’s Quad, then the Wardlaw Museum, which is free. Lunch somewhere on Market Street. In the afternoon, walk the three streets down to the cathedral precinct, round the castle on the cliff path, and out along The Scores. Finish on East Sands or with the Lade Braes walk up the burn.
That is the whole of St Andrews, and it costs nothing.
The first free day covered the town. The second should go along the coast. Walk the Fife Coastal Path south from East Sands past Kinkell Ness to the Rock and Spindle, the volcanic sea stack about four kilometres out, and on towards Boarhills if the legs allow. Cliffs, caves, rock platforms and almost nobody.
Or go north: across the Eden estuary to Tentsmuir, where a pine forest runs down to a vast beach and a large seal colony hauls out on the sands. It is free, and it is one of the best wildlife sights in eastern Scotland.
Worth understanding if you are visiting from England. Scotland’s access legislation gives a right of responsible access over almost all land and inland water — the beaches, the links, the coast path, the woods and the farmland tracks around St Andrews are all open to walk on, provided you behave responsibly.
That is why the Old Course, of all places, is walkable: it is common land, it carries rights of way, and the town has always used it.
Yes. It is public common land with rights of way, and it is closed to golf on Sundays, when walking across it is a local tradition.
Yes — you can walk to it and stand on it, most easily on a Sunday when there is no play.
Yes, the university’s museum on The Scores is free to enter.
Tentsmuir Point, ten kilometres north across the Eden estuary, where large numbers haul out.
No, both charge, but the cathedral precinct, the graveyard and the views of both from outside cost nothing.