It was an exceptionally gorgeous weekend here up North, so when a friend came up for a weekend visit we thought a day trip to Stirling would be in order. We hiked up Dumyat and had a brief wander in Stirling city, before resting our feet for a quick cream tea. The best tea place in town (that is open on a Sunday) is the Darnley Coffee House, close to the castle.

This is a cute, small little cavern of a coffee house. It looks a bit like an adorable, romantic cellar restaurant, and the atmosphere is quite cosy (or gezellig as we would say). The one downside of the place itself is that you have to go through the kitchen to go to the bathroom – which surely, if you work there, is pretty annoying.

Tea is not a specialty of this place, coffee is, and they do a relatively large range of food. My partner had a creamy tomato soup, which I am assured was delicious. Although I feel more like a refreshing beer after a long hike, I decided to go for the cream tea, which was fairly cheap for a touristic town! For tea I selected the Darjeeling, and it came with 2 scones, covered in sugar and still warm, and plentiful amounts of cream and jam.

It was really good you guys. The scones were absolutely perfect, and that is not a word I tend to use an awful lot. The extra sugar was perhaps not necessary, but the texture and flavour were brilliant. The tea was alright, not really anything special. It was a generic bagged Darjeeling, so it lacked a bit of the refined touch a loose leaf tea would have.
That said, if you’re going to visit Stirling one day, I would highly recommend visiting this little place. After you’ve visited the castle and graveyard, it’s an easy stroll downhill. Because there is not much that beats a tea break when you’re on a city trip.