Perth; Sunday, 24 August, 2014

An excellent night’s sleep made up for the previous night’s missing hours of shut eye and I was pretty much convinced I had slept through my alarm when I woke up feeling totally refreshed, only to be surprised that it wasn’t yet 8am.

As I was up much earlier than planned I had a leisurely breakfast and was still able to head out of the hotel and catch the bus an hour earlier than I’d planned out of the city centre and over to the Palace of Scone.

The Palace was once an Abbey and it was here, on the sacred Stone of Destiny, that Scottish kings were proclaimed for centuries – up until Edward I stole the stone and spirited it away to England at the end of the 13th Century. Over the years use of the site has changed and today it’s the site of a spectacular 19th Century Scottish Georgina Gothic Palace that is still lived in by the Earls of Mansfield – though they have opened large parts of the grounds and the ground floor of the palace to the public.

I spent a long time wandering around both the palace and the grounds, including a quick journey through the star shaped maze.

Having exhausted Scone I headed back into town and had a bit more of a wander round the town centre, crossing over the Tay on the Tay Viaduct path that runs next to the railway tracks over the river, including a link from the middle down onto Moncreiffe Island. Over on the opposite bank is a sculpture trail that I followed back to the Old Bridge and then back into town.

Next to the bridge is the city museum and art gallery which I popped into to have a look round, but there wasn’t that long before closing time so I wasn’t able to see everything that they had on display.

I headed back to the hotel to freshen up and then out for dinner – using the rankings in Trip Advisor to pick what turned out to be an outstanding Nepalese restaurant.

Bloated from excellent food I waddled back to the hotel for a night-cap and an early night to give my stomach a chance to digest all the food.