When Sarah Merker sat down one day in 2013 to snack on a scone at one of Britain’s many, many historic sites, she had no idea that she was embarking upon a quest that would take her a decade to complete and transform her into a kind of national celebrity.
She and her husband had just become dues-paying members of the National Trust, a conservation society that manages historic properties like castles and country manors across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland’s are managed separately). The idea was to reward herself with scones for visiting and learning about the sites, and to write a blog that rated the history, and the baking, each on a five-point scale.