Scone Palace and Gardens

As the title of this entry subtly hints, I spent the morning of my day in Perth, Scotland today at Scone Palace and Gardens. Scone is a medieval town in what is now the council area of Perth and Kinross.

Google Maps told me that it would take just over 50 minutes to walk there from my hotel. The sky was overcast, but the clouds did not look the least bit threatening. To be honest, they looked like total wimps, too timid to threaten a soul. And the forecast didn’t predict any precipitation until this evening.

There is a bus that could have taken me to the palace faster, but I decided to walk because it wasn’t much past 9:00 when I was ready to go and the Scone Palace and Gardens don’t open until 10:00. If Google was correct, the walk would get me there right about opening time.

Fortunately, the weather forecast proved accurate. There was no rain.

I arrived at the gate at about 9:45, very proud that I’d beaten Google’s predicted walking time.

The gate was closed. A few cars with occupants waited in front of it. A minute or so later, a van pulled up from inside the estate and stopped well short of the gate. The gate then began to swing open and the van turned around and returned the way it came.

Either someone in the van had a remote control or the gate was magical. I’m willing to believe either explanation.

The waiting cars then drove in and I walked in. The driveway through the estate to the palace is a long one. It took me 15 or so minutes to get from the road to the Scone Palace and Gardens ticket booth.

The walk along the driveway is very scenic. There are lots of trees, fields, and vistas. A couple of herds of cows grazed in a couple of the fields as I strolled by. Or possibly it was one herd that was separated between the two fields as a social experiment.

Assuming Google told me the time to walk to the castle, not to the estate’s gate, it turns out I took longer, not less time than Google predicted. Dejected, I showed the ticket I’d bought online to the attendant.

She advised me to take in the gardens first because the palace was crowded then. (As I walked along the driveway, three large tour buses and some cars passed me on their way through the estate to Scone Palace.)

Palace Gardens

The gardens of Scone Palace are amazing. They’re enormous and include forested areas, large lawns, and a few flower beds.

There’s also a “kitchen garden.” The more agriculturally inclined among you probably surmised that they grow vegetables, fruits, and herbs there, not kitchens. Hey, I’m a city boy. How was I to know? Kitchens have to come from somewhere. Do giant storks deliver them?

There’s also a large hedge maze, the perimeter of which forms a star shape. I was hesitant to go in. I’m hopeless at finding my way through those things and I had to catch a train out of Perth in about 23 hours.

But in I went. One of the first things I spotted was a raised viewing platform with stairs going up to it. I decided to head for that so I could view the maze from above. I headed for one side of it. But, of course, heading toward something in a maze invariably forces you away from it. After considerable wandering in the maze, often crossing a junction I’d crossed before, I found the stairs to the viewing platform. I also found the fence put in front of it bearing a sign saying that the area was temporarily closed. This business of tourist attractions closing sections, or closing completely, because I’m there is getting tiresome.

As I walked through the maze, I heard a fountaIn burbling somewhere in it. I could also hear some children playing near the fountain. I then became determined to find the fountain so I headed for it. I’ll never learn, will I? I said it once, I’ll say it again. Don’t head for things in a maze. That’s what they want you to do. They just want to sucker you deeper into their web.

At a few points, there was only one hedge row between me and the fountain, but no opening to it. I could see through the branches that the kids playing there were not much more than toddlers. They were with a man who I assume was their father, but he might have been a child abductor. I hope he was the former.

Considering how long it took me to find my way through the maze, I think the man might have brought the children in as infants and raised them there. The kids were a bit rambunctious, but I thought they were quite well-adjusted for children brought up in a maze.

Eventually, I gave up trying to find the fountain and tried to find the exit. Somehow, my panic over my entrapment forced a memory up in my mind. I remembered that the advice for getting through a maze is, when you reach a fork in the road, … you’re waiting for me to say, “Take it,” aren’t you? No. Take the path that keeps you as close to the perimeter as possible, heading in the same direction around the maze, clockwise or counterclockwise as the case may be.

That got me out. It also showed me that you can’t exit without passing the only entrance to the fountain area, which is close to the exit. It’s an attractive little fountain.

When I went through the exit, which is almost right beside the entrance, I noticed that there’s a diagram of the maze, between the entrance and the exit. I should have looked at it before I went in. It clearly shows that there’s a not straight, but fairly easy path around the maze. When you enter, turn left and then follow the above advice. Always keep as close as you can to the perimeter, walking in a clockwise direction.

After leaving the maze, I headed back through the gardens to Scone Palace.

I almost forgot. Some peacocks strut through the gardens. I only saw them on the lawns close to Scone Palace, not deeper in the gardens, but I don’t know if that’s just coincidental or if they confine themselves to that area.

At various points in the gardens, there are QR codes on posts that you can scan to get more information on various aspects of the history of the grounds.

For example, on a mound close to Scone Castle, there’s a mound called “Moot Hill.” Upon the mound sits a replica of the Stone of Destiny, also called the Stone of Scone, which I discussed yesterday in my post about the Perth Museum. This was where the Kings of the Scots used to be crowned back in the days when there were Kings of the Scots. The Stone of Destiny was an important part of those ceremonies.

The first king to be coronated on the Stone of Destiny on Moot Hill was Kenneth MacAlpin in 843. Macbeth was inaugurated there in 1040. The last to be crowned at Scone was King Charles II in 1651. Later, the English stole the stone and took over Scotland.

Another interesting fact about Moot Hill is that it didn’t exist in the very early days of the Scottish coronations there. The custom was that when noblemen visited the monarch, they brought some of the soil from their homelands in their boots. They’d empty it on what is now Moot Hill to honour the king—a lot of soil accumulated over the years.

Scone Palace

Upon entering Scone Palace, the attendant at the door said that it’s still a private residence and the family doesn’t want any photography or videos in their home, so you won’t see any interior photos of Scone Palace here. (It’s been the family home of the Murrays for almost 400 years. The current occupants are the 9th Earl and Countess of Mansfield.)

Much of the palace has two storeys, but the only publicly accessible rooms are on the ground floor and a restaurant, a coffee shop, a gift shop and public toilets are on a level below that.

I immediately formed a mental image of the family cowering upstairs with kids screaming, “When are those uncouth commoners going to leave, Mommy? We want to play downstairs.” I imagine castle upkeep is quite expensive. I guess us uncouth paying commoners are a necessary evil to cover the cost.

There aren’t guided tours through the palace. Instead, visitors can wander through on their own along a route marked by stanchions.

In each of the publicly accessible rooms in Scone Palace, racks hold laminated sheets with information about the room, for use in the room, with different sheets in a variety of different languages. Like out in the gardens, there’s also a QR code you can scan to get the verbatim English version of what’s on the sheet.

The rooms are opulent. There is a dining room with a beautiful wooden dining room table. It’s set with 20 fancy, schmancy place settings. The information sheet for that room says that those place settings are the same ones that were used when Queen Victoria was at Scone Palace. I don’t imagine that sort of thing is dishwasher-safe, so why would anyone want it?

Among the other rooms, there’s a library. There’s a beautiful, big desk in the middle of the library. The cases lining the walls contain … oh, come on. What do you think cases in a library contain? Do I have to spell everything out for you?

That’s right. They contain a large collection of tea sets and porcelain pieces. How the hell is that a library? It has no books, except for a big hardcover book on the desk and a couple of magazines on a side table.

A narrated video on the history of the Stone of Destiny and Scone Palace plays in another of the rooms. It provided a lot of very information, of which I remembered a couple of things.

For one, the narrator obviously had to say “Scone” a lot. He pronounces it as “scoon,” i.e., like “soon,” but with a hard “c” sound after the “s” and before the “oon.” I’ve been pronouncing it with a hard “o.”

The other interesting tidbit I learned is that there is some possibility that the Stone of Destiny that’s now sitting in the Perth Museum and had been sitting in Westminister Abbey for centuries, and is still used in coronations of the British monarch, may not be the actual Stone of Destiny that was used during the crowning of Kings of Scots until Charles II in 1651. Some descriptions of the stone in ancient documents don’t completely match the stone on display today.

There is a theory that the original Stone of Scone was hidden for safekeeping when the English invaded and it was replaced with a replica, which the English took thinking it was the real stone. Nobody knows if that’s true or, if so, where the original stone is.

By the time I’d finished with the gardens and Scone Castle, it was time for lunch. I didn’t have a reservation, but I intended to try to get a table in the small palace restaurant. I failed in that. It’s not that the tables were all taken, but, according to the sign on the door, the restaurant was closed for a private event. Yeah, sure. The private event was probably my attendance at Scone Castle, so of course they had to close so I couldn’t get in.

Nevertheless, the coffee shop was open and willing to sell me a sandwich and a slice of carrot cake. Unsurprisingly, the coffee shop at Scone Palace sells a wide variety of scones. I have absolutely no idea if scones have anything whatsoever to do with Scone Palace, or the medieval town of Scone, but I’m sure people would be disappointed if Scone Palace didn’t sell scones. It’d be like Burger King not selling burgers.

Not being a scone fan, I didn’t buy one.

Hmm. I wonder if the person at the counter would have mocked me if I ordered a scone and pronounced “scone” as “scoon.” Or would he have given me an appreciative nod? Probably the former.

After eating, I left Scone Palace, walked back down the long driveway and, instead of walking, caught the bus back into town.