Prestwick's claim on history is exact: the first Open Championship was played here in 1860, over twelve holes, three times round, and won by Willie Park with a score of 174. The championship stayed until 1872 and returned many times after. Prestwick Golf Club still occupies the same links beside the railway line, and the Red Lion on the Main Street — where the Ayrshire golfers met in 1851 to found the club — is still a pub.
But there is more to Prestwick than the golf, and more than the airport it is usually reduced to. It has one of the longest beaches on this coast, a proper walkable Main Street, and a 12th-century ruin at the top of the town that most people driving to their flight never notice.
Golf
Three clubs, all on links land within a mile or so of each other: Prestwick Golf Club, the Open's birthplace and a quirky, blind-shot, utterly original course; Prestwick St Nicholas, founded in 1851 and one of the oldest clubs in the world; and Prestwick St Cuthbert, the most affordable of the three and a parkland-ish contrast. Visitor access and dress codes differ between them — see each course page.
The beach and esplanade
A long stretch of sand with a promenade, backed by grass, with Arran across the water and the Heads of Ayr to the south. It carries a Scotland Beach Award. Along the front are a play park, a mini golf course, outdoor exercise equipment, an ice cream shop and Prestwick Sailing Club at the Grangemuir Road end. The Pow Burn estuary at the north end and the links foreshore are good for waders and wildfowl. National Cycle Route 7 runs along the coast here, linking Prestwick to Ayr and Troon.
The old town
St Nicholas Old Kirk, near the airport station, is a roofless 12th-century church, once an outpost of Paisley Abbey, with an old graveyard — Andrew Strath, the golf club's first Keeper of the Green, is buried there. Bruce's Well sits behind St Ninian's Episcopal Church: the legend is that Robert the Bruce, ill with a skin disease usually called leprosy, struck the ground with his spear, drank from the spring that appeared and was cured, and afterwards endowed a leper hospital here. The Mercat Cross on the Main Street carries the inscription recording its rebuilding in 1777, and the Shaw Monument, a 50-foot tower east of the town, is an 18th-century folly that now, inevitably, overlooks the runway.
The airport
Glasgow Prestwick is the nearest airport to Girvan — about 40 minutes by road, or a straightforward train journey via Ayr, with its own station right at the terminal. It was a transatlantic gateway for half a century, hosted a US Air Force base in the war, and remains the only place in Britain Elvis Presley ever set foot, when his army transport refuelled here in 1960. Plane-spotters use the mound near the perimeter. For anyone flying early out of Prestwick, staying in Girvan and driving up is entirely practical — see getting here.
Getting there and what to combine it with
About 27 miles and 40 minutes from Girvan on the A77, or roughly 40 minutes by train changing at Ayr, with Prestwick Town station a few minutes' walk from both the Main Street and the beach. Troon is six miles north and pairs naturally with it for a golf-and-beach day; Ayr is four miles south and has far more to do on a wet afternoon.
