THE Queen is throwing open her private Balmoral golf course to the public –for £50-a-head.
She recently began letting out the nine-hole course on the Aberdeenshire estate to corporate customers at up to £2,000-a-day. But a shortage of company hires has forced the Queen to allow individuals to use the greens – which are normally only open to members of staff, Royals and their guests.
It costs up to £3 million a year to run the estate, which comes directly out of the Queen’s pocket.
Yesterday Richard Gledson, the Estate’s Factor, said: “We thought it would be a nice idea to open it up to people.
“Two things [prompted this] – firstly, we are not getting as many corporate days as we had in the past, because of the downturn in Aberdeen. Also we do get a lot of requests from members of the public who would like to play at Balmoral, and because we have some spare capacity, because we are not having the corporate days .
“They will come on the days that were corporate days, so as not to interfere with our membership.”
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