Tag Archives: Fortingall yew tree

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