Sneak Peek: This article will appear in the Oct. 7 issue of Global Golf Post.
MEADOWS OF DAN, VIRGINIA | Where to begin to tell the enchanting story of Primland, where stargazing, mountain biking and golf come together in the beautiful quiet of the Blue Ridge foothills?
Primland is a resort like few others, a place where the Donald Steel-designed golf course sits in the middle of a property that’s bigger than the island of Bermuda – seven miles wide and 10 miles long – and much of Primland’s charm is the luxury of just being there.
So, where to start in sharing the Primland experience?
With the pig candy, of course.
It alone may be worth the trip to Primland, which sits just above the North Carolina line in southwest Virginia, approximately two and a half hours by car from Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham area. There is so much more to Primland than the pig candy but let’s start there.
To call it bacon is like saying the Grand Canyon has a nice view.
Pig candy is a wickedly seductive creation made with bacon, sliced as thick as a good piece of cardboard, and heartily seasoned with maple syrup, brown sugar and a dash of cayenne. It can be a snack, a side dish or, should you succumb to temptation, a meal in itself.
An order arrived at the tree house where my wife and I were staying – yes, a tree house with a deck perched a couple of thousand feet above the Dan River basin – and it arrived in a pink pig-faced mug. It can be debated whether a nice pinot noir is the right wine with pig candy but it’s what we had and, well, it worked sitting on the deck watching two hawks do lazy circles overhead, hoping we might leave some for them.
Founded by Frenchman Didier Primat, the late grandson of a European oil magnate, and still owned by eight of his family members, the 12,000-acre resort opened its golf course 12 years ago and recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of its 51-room lodge/observatory. It’s the kind of place that feels like a cleansing breath, remote and blessed with all the right touches, both natural and man-made.
The first time longtime tour standout Jay Haas visited Primland, he wondered for a time if he was being pranked.
“The vistas, oh my gosh …” – Jay Haas
“I’m checking my GPS and thinking there’s no way there’s a golf course and a big hotel here. Then you get there and it’s gorgeous,” said Haas, who now serves as one of the resort’s ambassadors.
“The vistas, oh my gosh …”
Now the Haas family makes regular visits to Primland, not just because he’s an ambassador but because the grandkids insist.
Primland is about the great outdoors, where guests can spend hours riding old logging trails up and down the mountain, keeping a lookout for bears. One all-terrain vehicle guide said she’s seen as many as nine bears in one day, which offers a sense of how natural Primland remains.
We didn’t see any bears on our ride through the woods but it didn’t matter. There’s a joy to riding through the woods, splashing through creek beds and wondering what’s around the next bend in the trail. It’s made all the better in warm weather because Primland typically runs 10 degrees cooler than the towns a couple thousand feet below.
Before or after the ATV rides, which can stretch up to 2½ hours, archery, clay shooting, fly fishing for rainbow trout in the Dan River, and even tomahawk tossing are among the activities that set Primland apart.
If you’re into pheasant hunting, September is the time to visit Primland. The hunts are part sport, part party. Hunters dress in tweed and perch on a bluff waiting for the birds to be flushed toward them. Lunch is served on white linen tablecloths, and if you’ve ever seen an episode of Downton Abbey, then you get the picture.
Should you be staying in one of the guest cottages, arrangements can be made for a chef to prepare the pheasant you bagged for your dinner while other birds are donated to a local food bank.
That would be enough to bring guests to Primland, which never feels crowded even when it’s full as it increasingly is these days. The lodge has 51 rooms, there are 10 mountain cottages available and three tree houses built in full cabin style. The tree houses are about the size of a hotel suite complete with the modern essentials, including cable television, wireless connections and, should you want it, room service.
If you’re fortunate enough to stay in one of the tree houses, Primland provides four-wheel drive vehicles to get you there. The tree houses are less than a mile from the lodge, which sits at the center of the resort, but getting to the prized cabins requires more than the family sedan.
What about the golf, you may be wondering.
It’s special.
In American circles, Donald Steel’s name isn’t as familiar as Tom Fazio, Tom Doak or Gil Hanse but his design résumé is impressive. The Englishman has created more than 80 courses worldwide and reworked more than that. Steel is the only course designer to have worked on or consulted with the R&A on every site in the Open Championship rota.
With the Highlands course at Primland, Steel has taken a rolling piece of land and turned it into a captivating but demanding layout that has been ranked among the top 30 public courses in the United States multiple times.
Steel took a minimalist approach at the Highlands, and while the course doesn’t have extreme elevation changes like many mountain courses, it does bump and roll. The fairways are generous, and that’s important because Steel left great swaths of rugged area on the sides of many holes. Unlike many mountain courses, the Highlands sits more atop the mountain than in a valley.
“Donald Steel did a heckuva job,” Haas said.
The bentgrass greens are enormous, and they can be like towns with different communities fit into them. Picking the right club is critical at the Highlands course if you don’t like putting from long range all day. The 13th green is 60 yards deep and approximately 20 yards wide, and the 18th green is nearly as big.
There are spots on the golf course where the majesty of the setting dissolves any frustration the game itself might create. The view from the back of the first green and the short trip to the second tee offers a sweeping vista of mountains across the valley where the Dan River gurgles below.
While the course is rarely crowded, it’s the odd day when golfers don’t encounter deer or wild turkey roaming the property.
When you’re finished with golf, it’s easy to slip into the 19th Pub and sample any number of beverages. It’s a great place to grab lunch before golf or dinner afterward. The tuna tacos and the burgers are understandably popular.
On weekends, there is a barbecue buffet with live bluegrass music at the stables down the hill from the lodge. There are even moonshine tastings from time to time, using legalized versions of the mountain blend and, yes, there are some stills on the property, including one that has been fully restored.
Dinner at Elements, the main restaurant in the lodge, is as comfortable as it is enticing. A large fireplace flickers in the middle of the restaurant and tables along one long wall provide a sweeping view of the 18th hole and the hills in the distance, a perfect spot to watch the afternoon fade away.
The pork belly starter (a cousin of pig candy) is made with a quail egg, greens and mustard, and its reputation stretches beyond the boundaries of Primland. Scallops prepared with fennel, turnips, cauliflower and bacon as well as a classic beef tenderloin are worth the drive up the mountain.
Primland’s version of a nightcap is unique. The Primat family’s interest in astronomy led to adding an observatory to the lodge, a tall silo that comes to life every night when guests can bring a liquid nightcap and look at the heavens.
We caught a perfectly clear evening, and the young woman who gave us our celestial tour talked like an excited youngster about all the things above us. We started by looking through a smaller telescope at Saturn shining nearly a billion miles away, its rings visible through the scope.
With the top of the silo spinning to allow the big telescope to be aimed at distant galaxies, we toured the heavens without leaving the comfort our cushioned seats, a few of us reaching for blankets to ward off the evening chill.
It felt like being on top of the world.
We weren’t but Primland is close enough.