Photo: Courtesy Sarah Merker
There’s nothing quite so quintessentially British than a mid-afternoon scone piled up high with clotted cream and lashings of jam.
Sarah Merker, 49, has become quite the expert on the humble snack, having sampled a staggering 244 of them on a decade-long tour ofNational Trustheritage sites across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, a project she was determined to complete to honor her late husband Peter.
“To be honest with you, I wasn’t massively into scones when I started but you know scones and the National Trust are kind of synonymous but now I love them!” Merker tells PEOPLE, adding: “Everyone thinks I must be sick of them but no, I am a born-again scone evangelist!”
When Peter died of cancer in 2018, Sarah was determined to continue the mission in his memory and chose her final stop at Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland as it was a place they had previously visited together.
Sarah and Peter Merker at Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.Sarah Merker
“I was lucky that Pete always supported me and came along – he would have been delighted that he wasn’t forgotten at the end of it all,” Merker says.
The marketing executive from Isleworth, West London, scored each scone out of 5 on herblogwith a little description of her adventures along the way. The blog eventually turned into a book,The National Trust Book of Scones,and Merker formed a 7,000-strong group of like-minded scone aficionados on Twitter, making the national news when she completed her mission.
“I wasn’t expecting all this attention! Scones are such a great subject because there’s a little controversy [jam or cream first] and it definitely caught people’s imaginations,” says Merker, adding that she hopes her story will inspire others to do something a bit out-of-the-ordinary. “Anything you can do that brings you joy, just do it and keep going with your ideas because you never know where they will take you.”
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As for her favorite scone, it was a seasonal one-off at the Treasurer’s House in York that hit the spot.
And the million-dollar scone question: jam or cream first? “I’m a jam-first girl especially if it’s clotted cream from Cornwall which is a bit gloopier and I just think it makes sense but if I was using cream from Devon, I might go cream first.”
source: people.com
