The Isle of Arran, Scotland, is one of the most southerly Scottish islands and sits in the Firth of Clyde between Ayrshire and Kintyre. Arran is 19 miles long by 10 miles wide but has a remarkable diversity of landscapes and seascapes.

With 7 golf courses, Arran has the highest ratio of golf courses to people (around 4,500) anywhere in the world. Another world record Arran holds is the golf course at Shiskine, Blackwaterfoot. It is the only 12-hole course in the world! Shiskine seaside links is a short journey across the island and is a true gem with stunning views over to Mull of Kintyre, this is the true heritage of Scottish golf; golf as it was played by Old Tom Morris, Willie Park and Willie Fernie too, who laid the course out. Golf World have regularly ranked Shiskine as one of the top 100 courses in Britain.

Often referred to as ‘Scotland in Miniature’, the Isle of Arran within a short compass captures many aspects of the beauty of Scotland as a whole, from towering granite peaks to peaceful sandy bays overlooked by palm trees growing in the warm climate of the Gulf Stream.

As we launch our Environmental Policy (which can be found on the Environment Page), it seemed a good time to bring you up to date with our thinking on the whole carbon emission/zero carbon debate.

For a long time, we’ve wrestled with the dilemma that in order to visit our projects to ensure that the design and construction achieves environmental enhancement, we need to get on a plane and fly – with all of the inherent problems that creates with regard to our carbon footprint. So, we’ve been looking for some time at various schemes that could reduce that footprint. The one thing we’ve learned over the past few months is that there are a lot of snake-oil schemes that achieve nothing.

Half of the problem is trying to determine what kind of offsetting (actually, the better term for it is ‘mitigation’ as real one-to-one offsetting is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve) any programme is contributing to – it’s all too easy to say that planting trees, or giving low-emission light bulbs out in third world countries, will “offset carbon footprints” but it is just not that easy to work out – offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened.

We’re now investigating various schemes, with the assistance of Golf Environment Europe which might, in the long term, be a better ‘green pound’ spend than anything else.

We’re working on it, and will update the Blog once we’ve reached some conclusions. In the meantime, do take a look at our Environmental Policy Statement.

This week saw European Golf Design hosting a Media Day at the Twenty Ten Course at Celtic Manor. Golf and Travel writers from the UK and Europe were invited by EGD and Celtic Manor to experience the new Ryder Cup Course, designed by European Golf Design.

An early start, 6.30am on a Monday (Sarah had no idea such a time existed) saw Ross, Matt, Sarah, Jeremy and Queenie (MIchael King – EGD Director, ex-Ryder Cup and Walker Cup golfer “as he describes himself”) drive down to Celtic Manor in torrential rain and gale force winds. Why didn’t we chose to hold the event in the summer?

As we drove over the Severn Bridge, the rain stopped, the clouds parted and brilliant sunshine shone down on us. Who says it always rains in Wales?

Joining us on the day was the Twenty Ten Honorary Captain, Gareth Edwards CBE ex Wales and British Lions rugby footballer, and school friend of Queenie. Poor John Hopkins from The Times who played with them was subjected to five hours of school boy tales and humour.

Golf writers from Finland, Denmark, Ireland and Scotland joined us for breakfast before venturing out onto the Twenty Ten Course. Despite the heavy rain that has fallen for weeks, the course was in superb condition. As usual with golfers, everyone complained about their game and the putts that didn’t drop but everyone was in agreement the course was in fantastic shape, and a true test of golf. Reliving their rounds over lunch, another golfers trait, they all talked about how they hoped to play the course again and what a fantastic day it had been.

Several stayed on for the night at the hotel, apart from poor Mark Alexander who missed his train and was contemplating the sleeper train back to Scotland, arriving home at 7am Tuesday.

Mike Harris from Golf Monthly took the prize with a score of 28 points but the real winner was the course.

P.S. If you’d like to watch our day out at the Twenty Ten Course, the Audi Channel (Channel 884 – Sky Digital) and Audi’s website (Check the Audi Channel link) will be showing highlights towards the end of August.