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A year or so ago Donald Trump, yes, Ivana’s old man, made a bid to cement his Scottish roots by building a golf course. Not just any golf course, you understand, in fact it had to be the best golf course in the world. In keeping with his beliefs, he designed a family coat of arms with, among other things including American eagles, the motto “Nunquam Concedere “ loosely – never give in. Which neatly summarises his attitudes. Passed the golf course on the road north from Aberdeen and thought ‘must do lunch there’. In Peterhead they have about fifty words for wind. A few days later when we did lunch at Donald’s place, it was a nice day but the wind was ‘Coorse’. The wind, as always for Peterhead, was bitterly cold and strong enough to have to lean into. But, apparently, technically it was a Coorse wind.

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Lunch at Don’s place

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For the location of the best golf course in the world Trump chose the largest dunes in the world, a location also sought by developers of an extensive wind farm. I thought that dunes were meant to be made of sand, but these are covered with grass. You will get an image of the place by viewing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMcn7ZAx3lY

Funnily enough, not all of the commentary on Youtube was kind to Donald. One of the more pithy contributions was “Ugly as hell. Green grass growing out of sand dunes looks so artificial. Also, if it’s windy enough for windmills, isn’t it too windy to play golf?”

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Another piece of landscaping of similar magnitude is the Pitfour Estate. Purchased by James Ferguson of in 1700, four successive Ferguson lairds developed the Estate until it covered 50 square miles of Buchan. Around the original house, which was rebuilt and enlarged several times, the landscape was hugely reshaped to incorporate a 50 acre artificial lake.

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As well as gardens, classical ‘temples’ and rustic ruined follies, the estate’s substantial buildings included stables, kennels, dairy and chapel. There was even a two-mile race-course. More ambitiously, the third laird built a canal in the hopes of shipping agricultural produce from the Pitfour estate to Peterhead. The scale of all this estate development led to Pitfour being called ‘the Blenheim of the North’ The first four lairds, three of whom were Edinburgh solicitors while the fourth was a Member of Parliament, each in their different way contributed to the development of Pitfour. By contrast, the fifth and sixth lairds saddled the estate with so much debt that all had to be finally sold off in 1926. Would have been a nice place for a good golf course – less blustery conditions than Don’s place. Sweetiepie remembered that her dad used to borrow a boat to row the little girls around the lake.