As you all know by now, we are constantly on the lookout for a decent scone wherever we are but particularly so in Falkirk, our home town. Thankfully the town has plenty scone outlets to choose from. This one, Alder’s Traditional Tearoom, is situated in the short and rather oddly named Cow Wynd. The history of the street name itself is interesting because, in a way, it echoes the history of the town. Originally, when Falkirk Tryst was the cattle market for Scotland, this was the main route in and out of town for the drovers going to and from the south. The name was pretty well self-explanatory.

Cow Wynd?

When the Tryst declined, the town became industrialised. Then it was coal rather than cattle that came along here on it’s way from Shieldhill to the mighty Carron Ironworks. It was renamed Coalhill Road, once again self-explanatory.

Then, in 1842, in another self-explanatory move, when Falkirk High station opened it became High Station Road. In 1906, however, bucking the self-explanatory trend, it’s name reverted back to the Cow Wynd as a result of public pressure.  Alder’s has been here for a few years but is still a relatively new addition to the street, so we had high hopes. Unfortunately the whole experience was a bit of a let down. Although fairly new it looks a bit tired from the outside and it doesn’t get any better inside. It did, however, have a fair range of scones – plain, fruit, cheese and treacle. Pat opted for cheese and I thought, since I hadn’t had one for some time, that I would tackle a treacle.

Anti burghers

Notably, this was the first time I have had a treacle scone presented complete with jam and cream. Heyho, life on the edge! I managed to eat most of mine – jam and cream turned out to be the best bit. However, Pat could only nibble around the heavy dough center of her scone. Shame, we really want places like this to succeed but they need to pay much more attention to detail and spruce the place up a bit.

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Scone or scone?

We would not voluntarily wish to open the massive can of worms that is – how to pronounce the word “scone”, if it wasn’t for our Middle East correspondent sending a communiqué from Tel Aviv on that very subject. You have probably guessed that Tel Aviv is not promising scone territory, and you would be right, it’s not. Our correspondent however had noted an article in The Telegraph where they had decided to put the controversy to bed once and for all by conducting a survey asking people for the correct pronunciation. Scone, as in “gone” or scone as in “bone”? Result – you need know no more than, ‘we wiz right’!

Stats

For the pedants, however, 51% pronounced it to rhyme with “gone”, while 42% used the “bone” pronunciation. We can hear some of you saying that fifty one per cent isn’t all that decisive. If it’s enough to take us out of the EU, however, we think it can be deemed ‘absolute’! 3% were ‘don’t knows’ (can these people dress themselves?) and the rest used an entirely different pronunciation … what?? As a matter of interest, most of the respondents who got it right lived in the north of England and Scotland. Whereas those who got it wrong, lived in the Midlands and London.  Oh, and 61% of respondents said ‘jam first’ against 21% who said ‘cream first’. Presumably the other 18% just eat them raw! Unfortunately ‘raw’ could also be used to describe Alder’s scones pretty well.

FK1 1PU       tel: 01324 639625       Alder’s Traditional Tearoom