Tag Archives: Aberfeldy

Fortingall Hotel

Who would have thought it? A wee boy born here in the pretty little Perthshire village of Fortingall would eventually end up as Governor of Judea and condemning Jesus Christ to death. Extraordinary really. Anyway according to legend Pontius Pilate was born here. His mum and dad must have been on holiday. If, like Boris Johnson, you believe that then you will probably also believe that everything will be hunky dory after Brexit. Isn’t Brexit fantastic, never have Britain’s knickers been so twisted. It kind of defies comment!

What a difference a week makes!
Highland picture by Joe Adam at Fortingall Hotel
in reception, a typical highland scene by Joseph Adam

We’re here for the Fortingall Art Festival which, as it turns out, was last week. Wires crossed, knickers twisted, whatever, we missed it. To be fair, it was in no way a disaster. Driving down Glen Lyon must figure as one of the best drives in the world. And on a beautiful day like today, even more so. What do you do when you’ve arrived a week late for an arts festival? Look for a scone, of course!

Internal view of Fortingall HotelA few years back we actually stayed in Fortingall Hotel. That must have been in pre scone blog days, however, when we actually had a life. It was nice to be back though and as soon as we walked in it all looked very familiar. It has that slightly lived-in look of an old Scottish shooting lodge …  homely and comfortable.  Scones at Fortingall HotelThe staff all seemed to be from Poland but, as is their way, were super helpful and friendly. We could have sat in the lounge, the library or the bar. We chose the lounge and very soon we had our lovely warm scones in a beautiful silver basket  complete with lashings of jam and cream. What more could you ask for?  Well, we would have liked our scones to have been a little bit better. They were okay but definitely not topscones. Everything else was perfect, however, so we thoroughly enjoyed our time here.External view of Fortingall Hotel

Signpost for Dull near FortingallDull and Boring

When we left Fortingall we carried on down Glen Lyon towards Aberfeldy. Soon we came to the village of Dull which, as you can see from the signpost, is twinned with Boring in Oregon. We discovered that it’s possible to get a scone in Dull at Highland Safaris but we will have to leave that for another day. How exciting is that …. a Dull scone!

PH15 2NQ            tel: 01887 830367               Fortingall

///whites.sitting.presenter

ps This K6 was right next to the hotel and it was in good working order … as you would expect from one made in Falkirk. Fortingall is a site of great antiquity … even the vegetation is ancient. The famous Fortingall yew tree to the right of the picture, at 5000 t0 9000 years old, claims to be the oldest living thing in Europe. although I sometimes make the same claim when getting out of bed in the morning. If the tree is indeed something like 5000 years old, then having witnessed bronze age man, Roman invasions, the Vikings and two World Wars we guess it could be forgiven for viewing the kerfuffle over Brexit with a slightly jaundiced eye. Wonder what it will see in another thousand years?

Useful link: things to do in Aberfeldy

The Kenmore Hotel

Oh dear, here we go again … scone 101. First of all, apologies for this rather lengthy preamble. However, it is necessary to let you know how we came to be here, at the Kenmore Hotel, especially since we never had any intention of coming here in the first place. It’s great to get feedback from readers, a major part of the fun of a blog like this. One reader in particular always comes back with lots of comments and information on all sorts of things.

Not so much a scone correspondent, more of an informant … the ‘Stenhousemuir mole’. After our review of the Iron Goddess of Mercy tea at Claridges the ‘mole’ informed us about the Dorchester Hotel where you can get Scottish grown tea at £10 a cup. He commanded us to go and try it. Bearing in mind that most of what emanates from the ‘mole’ could be classed as ‘brain farts’, there initially seemed no reason to think that this snippet would be any different. Tea grown in Scotland??

Best tea in the world

Upon investigation however it turned out that this little gem was in fact accurate and, not only that, the tea was from Amulree. It had won ‘best tea in the world’ at the recent World Tea Championships in Paris. Surely not, how can that be? Those of you who are familiar with Amulree can be forgiven for being slightly incredulous. For those who aren’t familiar, Amulree is 750m above sea level and consists of a hotel (currently defunct) and a couple of houses surrounded by miles of open bare hillside. Even bracken struggles! Sconeys should know about tea as well as scones, particularly if the best tea in the world is grown in Scotland. Further investigation was obviously going to be necessary.

So off we went, determined to witness this spectacle for ourselves. We felt so sure we would recognise a tea plantation when we saw one (seen them on the telly). We didn’t bother trying to pin down the exact location before leaving home .. mistake. On arrival in the village we thought, if there was any tea growing going on, it would be down the Glen Quaich road on the slightly lower ground around Loch Freuchie. But there was no sign, and as we headed further down the glen on a GWR (great wee road) we eventually ended up in the lovely village of Kenmore without seeing hide nor hair of a tea plantation .. zilch!

Poets bar with Burns' poem above the fire
Poets bar with Burns’ poem above the fire

Mystified and ever so slightly scunnered we headed for the hotel. Perhaps they would be able to shed some light on local tea growing activities?

Poetry

The hotel is a mixture of old and new. The bar area, called Poet’s Bar, has become a place of pilgrimage for enthusiasts of Robert Burns. On a visit on 29th August 1787 he wrote a poem in pencil on the chimney breast and it is still there exactly as written. Though it’s now protected by a sheet oKenmore 05f glass. At the back of the hotel there is a much glitzier restaurant with fabulous views over the river Tay. Our scones were nicely presented on a slate-like piece of wood with jam and a tub of cream topped of with a strawberry, very pretty! The scones, however, had a slightly dry sawdusty texture which was disappointing.

We’re not going to pretend that sitting by a toasty log fire drinking excellent coffee and eating scones was any kind of  hardship. Quite the opposite. Could have sat there all day. However, we were still no nearer to achieving our mission so we had to press on .. duty called! The serving staff were all eastern european so we thought we would ask Kenmore 04the lady at reception about Dalreoch. She was from Paris and had never even heard of the tea tasting championships .. goodness. What self respecting Parisian does not know about the tea championships? The local post-master had heard rumours of tea being grown locally but had no idea where.

By this time we were seriously beginning to doubt the veracity of the mole’s info. We were beginning to wonder if we were on a wild goose chase. Suffice to say that, after a 12 mile return journey via Aberfeldy we did eventually find it.

Civilising tea

Nowadays you are almost tempted to look nostalgically at bygone times. A time when conflicts could be resolved by a chap wearing jodhpurs and drinking a civilising cup of tea. We doubt if even world beating Scottish tea is sufficient to beat some sort of order into the mess the world seems to find itself in … pity.

PH15 2NU       tel: 01887 830205        Kenmore Hotel, Kenmore

Habitat Café

You tend to think that every cafe/restaurant will have some sort of scone with which to provide the honest traveller a bit of sustenance. Not so, or at least not in Aberfeldy.

The search

We tried the Watermill first to no avail, then the Croft and both just shook their heads. The Croft is more of a restaurant so maybe it’s excusable there. We found it very disappointing, however, that the Watermill, which otherwise has a great café, could not cater to this simple request. Not to worry, we headed to the Habitat Café in the Square. Not only were we successful but were treated to a first time experience .. a cheese and bacon scone! Habitat03Now we have tasted a lot of scones but ‘cheese and bacon’ has never been one of them. As it turned out they do a different scone every day and it just so happened that today was the day for cheese and bacon.

It has to be said that some trepidation was involved in our approach to this scone. we were encouraged however when it turned up with just some butter .. no jam and cream ..phew! Needless to say, as cheese and bacon scones go, this was definitely the best we had tasted. More than that, however,it was one of the best scones we had tasted anywhere. It easily gets our topscone award for its light fluffy texture and sheer ludicrous inventiveness.

Elysian paradise

Bet the migrants waiting to cross the Channel have never tasted a cheese and bacon scone either. Do you think that is why they are trying so desperately? The media would have us believe that they all want to come to the UK because the UK is such a fantastic, wonderful, elysian paradise. Nothing could be further from the truth! Only a tiny minority thinks the UK is worth a try. Usually because they already speak English or have family here. The vast majority want to settle elsewhere in Europe. That’s because they have never heard of Aberfeldy, The Habitat Café and its scones .. sad!

PH15 2DD     tel:01887 822944     Habitat TripAd

Useful link: things to do in Aberfeldy