Cherwell District

Nice and local today, as we were visiting the nearby Blenheim Palace - a UNESCO-listed mansion and one of the largest private homes in England. It's also one of the only homes in the entire country known as a palace, despite not being an official Crown possession. Clearly lots of history here to delve into!

Thankfully it was right near our apartment, so we could have a small sleep in and then just a very short 10-minute drive. Arrived at the palace around 11am, though since it was a warm sunny day the car park was already filling up.

Headed inside across the large courtyard, taking in the sheer size of the place. It's not quite as large as Versailles, but definitely close and clearly takes quite a few inspirations from it! Most of the ground floor is open for visitors, though it's still used by the Duke of Marlborough as an occasional residence so the upstairs areas are closed off. You can tour some of the rooms up there for an extra fee, but considering we'd already shelled out 25 pounds each for tickets, we didn't feel like paying more. About now was when the clock struck 11am, and everyone politely observed the national minute's silence for the victims of the Manchester terrorist attack a few days earlier.

Wandered around the state rooms downstairs for a while, probably 90 minutes or so, taking in everything. The more public rooms at the front were decorated in an austere, non-gaudy way, while the rear rooms that were originally intended as private spaces were much more lavish.

I should explain as well, that the palace was a reward from the Crown to the first Duke of Marlborough for winning the Battle of Blenheim, a key turning point in the war of Spanish Succession around 1704. Blenheim is of course in Bavaria, southern Germany, making it the obvious place for an English army to defeat an Austrian army in a fight over Spain!

Anyway, the victorious general John Churchill was made Duke and granted an enormous estate, where he set about building the palace. It's been used ever since by the Dukes of Marlborough, and you may have noticed the surname of the original Duke. Yes, it's that Churchill family - Sir Winston himself was born and raised in the palace (though he wasn't in line for the dukedom, he was cousin to the duke). There was a large exhibition about Churchill and his life and times at the palace, and although interesting it was retreading a lot of the same ground we'd seen at the War Rooms in London a couple of weeks earlier. So we skimmed through.

Eventually we were done with the indoor areas, so retreated to the fancy restaurant for lunch. We decided to splurge as it was much nicer food, and not much more expensive than the cafeteria. I had a beef & onion pie, while Shandos had a lamb burger. Tasty.

After lunch we headed out into the gardens, which are absolutely enormous and cover a huge area. Some are landscaped and manicured, some are fairly untended woodlands, and some are in-between. We started with a walk alongside the river, culminating in a series of small waterfalls and a nice arching bridge over the top. Very pretty.

Kept exploring the gardens for another few hours, including the temple of Diana where Churchill proposed to his wife, the Secret Garden which had an amusing number of signs pointing to it, and a couple of small grottoes as well. Eventually sated, we hopped back in the car and drove around the side of the estate to the pleasure gardens.

These are marketed as a "family garden", which is just double-speak for "let your kids run wild". Thankfully most of them had gone home, so we had a look around the butterfly garden and the model village in relative peace.

Back to the apartment exhausted after a surprisingly long day, where we stayed in again and had pizza for dinner. Moving on again tomorrow!Read more