Scotland
During my career inside hotels, I had the pleasure of opening and transitioning several hotels to our brand, processes and systems. This was always a lot of work but well worth it because you got to meet a lot of new cool people and on top of that traveling to some pretty nice locations.
One of the best projects I ever worked on was the hotel transition in the UK. The hotel was owned by a famous doctor, professional car race team owner and entrepreneur. You may be asking yourself what’s the good doctor so famous for. Well in the late 60’s in America he was in partnership in a pharmaceutical company with another man. My Dr’s division developed a revolutionary device and his partner refused to take it to market. My Dr. left the partnership and started his own company and obtained a patent for the device. Let’s just say the good doctor made the right move. The device was a revolution in medicine to say the least. This made millions and millions of dollars, and he still owns the patent today.
Well, fast forward to 2006 and the Dr. now owns a few big things including this resort in the UK. This 200+ room resort is on over 500 acres of land and features two 18-hole golf courses and a spa. The resort is beautiful, sitting on a gentle hill overlooking the bay. The two golf courses, a links course and an American style course, unfold along the water’s edge. Across the bay on a clear day you can see another famous course and its clubhouse stands out like a sleeping giant. What a beautiful place, especially in June, which is the month I’m there. In this part of the UK in June the days are super long. The sun rises at 4am and it’s not dark until 10pm.
One day a few of us were having lunch at the golf course and we had the pleasure of witnessing a photo shoot that featured the Scottish golfer and past British Open Champion Paul Lawrie with the much more famous Claret Jug. It’s the trophy the winner of the British Open is presented with. Very cool. In the UK which is the home of the game of golf they take golf pretty seriously. Lawrie is the last Scotsman to win the Open. Let’s hope there is another soon.
The funny thing about these two beautiful golf courses is the hours they keep. Like I said earlier, the days are long in June in Scotland due to is 56 degrees of latitude. The courses opened every morning at 8:30 and are closed every afternoon at 5pm. I mean no golfers before 8:30 and everyone is off the course and the doors are closed at 5. Unbelievable! But it’s not America or Canada; it’s the UK and that’s their way. I think I played golf 30 times that trip. I could walk out of my hotel room at 6am and play nine holes before 7:45. At the end of the day I could start at 6pm and play 18 holes before dark. With my own golf clubs in hand, I made the best of it.
One of the best activities we had in the month we were there was the local pub in St. Andrews and the 2006 World Cup Soccer Championship. The fans, the pub goers, are insane about soccer or as they call it football. The thing that I didn’t know was just how much the Scots hate the Brits. Scotland did not have a team that qualified for the WC in 2006. When England played Ecuador on June 25 in the first knock out round the pub was full on in support of Ecuador. Those English bums and bast*%@# they would chant. This was incredible and kind of sad to see. Being from Canada I no idea the UK was so splintered. I certainly remember the Irish Republican Army’s activities and especially the pub bombings of the 70’s but I thought the rest was a peace-loving UK. Not so. I remember coming home and having a chat with my neighbor in Oakville who is English. I told him about the pub and his reply was, “Every hoodlum in England is from Scotland.” Well, England lost in the second round to Portugal a week later and the pub fans staged an impromptu parade to celebrate on the streets of St. Andrews; hundreds of Scots joined them.
The best part of the trip was on the last evening I was there. Dr. Don was selling the hotel to an investment firm from England and my hotel company had won the bid and received the management contract to run the hotel for the new owner. Dr. Don was packing up so-to-speak and one of his prized possessions was his Panoz Esparante GTR-1 which was always parked at the main hotel entrance. Don and his son operated a Le Mans team and he himself started the American Le Mans series that still runs very successfully today. I came back to the hotel after an early dinner, and I was with an old friend that I had known and worked with for many years. We entered the lobby, and we ran right into Dr. Don and he was in a great mood. My friend and Don were talking about wine and Don had the idea that my hotel company should feature his Chateau wines in all of our hotels. Well, it turns out that Don had been suggesting this all week and my friend told me at dinner just a few minutes earlier how BAD the wines were. Too funny. Their conversation on wine trailed off as I listened intently. I then asked Dr. Don, Dr. Panoz, “What are you doing with the car? Is it part of the purchase and sale agreement?” I knew full well that it wasn’t. He replied, “Do you want to take it for a spin?” I said “Yes, for sure, that sounds like fun” thinking that he was just kidding. He stepped aside and opened a drawer in the doorman’s desk and threw me the keys and said, “Don’t come back for at least an hour!” Holy Toledo! What a car!
My friend came with me, and we had a blast. 575 horsepower. At one point we were on the narrowest country lane doing over a 100 miles an hour and I was still in second gear. I have never driven anything like that before or since. The power, the acceleration, the handling and the brute force were simply stunning, and I love cars! At one point I think I really scared my friend and being the passenger is not always easy especially when the driver is me in that car! We bombed around the countryside, blew the doors off of most of the shops and restaurants in St. Andrews and we even went to the Old Course Clubhouse for a drink and pictures by the famous foot bridge on the 18th hole. What a blast. We returned the car about two hours after we left. Don was long gone and the only thing we had left to do was to head to the hotel bar to commiserate and tell our comrades about our evening’s adventure.
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