A SECOND golfing travelogue was published by an Allendale author on Friday, February 4, as a sequel to his first book, Golf in the Wild.

In 2014, author Robin Down published his first travelogue, Golf in the Wild, which took the reader on a journey from Allendale to the far north of Scotland.

Golf in the Wild - Going Home shares the story of the author's return to Allendale. "It was a journey I felt compelled to take: there would have been a strong sense of a ‘job left undone’ if I had not told the story of the return journey, if I had not gone home," Robin said.

The story is part local history, partly made of the author's memoirs, and part travelogue, as well as golf. It completes the narrative that was begun in Golf in the Wild. 

The sequel explores Scotland's remote northern shores, the Black Isle, and the Scottish Heartlands and Borders before completing the pilgrimage in Allendale. An imagined rail journey on the old Border Counties Railway line transports the reader from Riccarton to Hexham, along the Hexham and Allendale Railway which closed to passengers in 1930.

The final destination is the old nine hole course at Thornley Gate, which closed in 1992. Robin summarised: "It is a story of return, loss, and golf in wild places."