The tradition of curling in Scotland goes back centuries, with the Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum holding the world’s oldest curling stone, which dates from 1511. Though today it’s usually played inside, the sport was originally played outdoors with curlers sliding stones along the smooth ice that formed on lochs and other waterways (such as Lake Menteith – see page 62) to see who could get closest to the mark.
The earliest record we have of a curling match is from 1541 in which notary John McQuhin recorded a challenge between a monk and a relative of the abbott of throwing stones across the
