Outlander, weird tennis & a touch of France in Scotland

Falkland is a pretty wee town at the foot of the Lomond Hills in the kingdom of Fife in Scotland’s gently rolling east. With a population of barely more than 1000, it looks and feels more like a village, although two things make Falkland a good deal more significant than you’d first suspect.

One is the imposing royal palace and garden that dominates the town.

The other is Falkland’s role in Outlander, the TV adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s series of time-travelling historical novels.

In the show’s first episode, Falkland stands in for 1945 Inverness, where newlywed couple Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Frank (Tobias Menzies), stop on their honeymoon, checking into Mrs Baird’s B&B by the square.

That’s actually the Covenanter Hotel, a Falkland institution, where we find townspeople and tourists sitting, chatting, drinking and dining in the bar and coffee shop when we pop in on a Sunday at lunchtime.

After a chunky beef and ale pie with chips and veg, I stretch my legs around the town, which was made Scotland’s first conservation area in 1970.

Strolling by the cobbled lanes and gift stores, I pause by the neo-gothic fountain that, in Outlander, is where a mysterious figure catches Claire’s eye from the B&B.

Much of that show is set in the mid-18th century, during the Jacobite Rising that began in Scotland and swept across Britain. Falkland was largely untouched by the toil and trouble that stirred elsewhere as the Jacobite forces loyal to Charles Edward Stuart sought — but failed — to put their man on the British throne in place of the Hanoverian “usurper” George II.

Known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie”, he would have been Charles III if the rising had been successful.

He was part of the Stuart dynasty that had ruled Scotland for centuries, and also ended up with the English crown for a time. Falkland Palace was constructed by Charlie’s ancestors, James IV and James V, to replace an older castle built on a former hunting lodge.

A fan of French chateaux, James V financed lavish transformations of other royal residences, including Stirling Castle, whose restored renaissance apartments beguile visitors today. Married to Mary of Guise, a French noblewoman, James V died at Falkland Palace in 1542 — just six days after the birth of his daughter Mary, who became Queen of Scots.

She spent her early childhood overseas at the royal court in France but regularly returned home, and is said to have been enamoured by Falkland.

On her frequent visits, Mary enjoyed hunting and falconry on the estate and was also fond of a game in what is claimed to be the oldest surviving real (or royal) tennis court in the world.

After a self-guided tour of the palace — where we admire its tapestry-adorned corridors, painted ceilings, exquisitely carved furniture, and calming chapel — we walk through the garden, by its orchard and wildflower meadows, to the tennis court, where a doubles match is going on between members of the Falkland Palace Royal Tennis Club.

It doesn’t take long for the ball to come flying towards my face and camera. This is slightly different from the tennis we know. There is a net in the middle of the court, but another, higher one divides the playing area from the small roofed viewing area. A sign does warn spectators to step back, but, in my haste to see the action, I don’t see it.

Luckily for me, and my nose, no damage has been done, and the match goes on, the ball flying all over the place, across the central net and back, but also bouncing off the walls framing the court.

Leaving the players to this quirky game — which seems like a cross between modern-day tennis and squash — I walk back through the gardens towards a palace that was in ruins in the mid-17th century, damaged during a fire following its occupation by troops of Oliver Cromwell, who took control of Britain after the execution of a Stuart king, Charles I.

The palace was restored to its renaissance pomp in the late Victorian era after the estate was bought by a Scottish aristocrat, John, third Marquess of Bute, before it passed into the hands of the National Trust for Scotland in 1952.

As I leave the palace grounds, I pass a couple of Outlander fans from the US discussing which scenes were shot where in Falkland. In the show’s second season, one of the palace’s cellars was transformed into an apothecary, where Claire goes for medical supplies.

Gabaldon herself visited the palace on a 2019 trip to Falkland, where she bumped into a group of Outlander superfans who were here on a tour of the show’s Scottish filming locations.

They were probably be among those glued to their screens when season seven, part two, of the show premiered. Hours after it was broadcast on Starz in the US last month, it was on Foxtel in Australia.

+ Steve McKenna was a guest of Visit Scotland and Visit Britain. They have not influenced or read this story before publication. fact file + Entry to Falkland Palace and Garden is from March 1-October 31. Admission to both is £17 ($33) for adults, £14 ($27) for concessions, and £9.50 ($18.50) for children, with family tickets from £30 ($78). See nts.org.uk/visit/places/falkland-palace + Falkland is just over an hour from Glasgow and Edinburgh, and about half an hour from St Andrews, although if you’d like to stay in town overnight, the Covenanter Hotel has five rooms and a self-catering apartment. See covenanterfalkland.com + To help plan a trip to Scotland and Britain, see visitscotland.com and visitbritain.com