Travel / Day Trips
Blenheim Palace
Halfway between Bristol and London lies an astonishing palace with extensive gardens – and a mini train
His voice, once a cause of anguish through a lateral lisp, had a dramatic elocution to it. His manner was confident and bold and he held a gaze able to travel continents – if he squinted, he could see the whiskers of a kangaroo hopping in Australia. However, although he could only have been an upper class chap, I have to admit that I didn’t know that Winston Churchill was quite the aristocrat that he was.
Make no mistake, Blenheim Palace, where Churchill was born two months prematurely in 1874, is absolutely the grand and sprawling 18th century Baroque affair. Beautiful furniture, tapestries, porcelain and imposing portraits decorate the ostentatious and often enormously proportioned rooms. The Palace itself sits within vast grounds, filled with rose gardens, water terraces, a sub-stantial lake, the essential big house secret garden and the Duke’s Italian Garden.
Born into the Dukes of Marlborough, Churchill lived in Dublin from the age of six, but Blenheim re-mained the family home and the place he chose to marry. It is now home to the 11th Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. It’s also a World Heritage Site, as declared in 1987.
Here’s a nice quote from Churchill. MP: “Mr Churchill, must you fall asleep while I’m speaking?” Churchill: “No, it’s purely voluntary.” GSOH.
Here’s the thing. I’ve found that many Londoners request that we visit them and they don’t leave their beloved city. And yes, it’s a pretty cool city. But after a long week, it can occasionally be a bit of a drag to be tubing, bussing and burning the cash. One that not even the best freshly ground coffee, delicate macaroons and finest bookshops can remedy. We found Blenheim because it was one and a half hours from our house and the house of some lovely London friends. Voila.
And so, we met across the gravel of Blenheim Palace. We marched around the interior and then basked in the sunshine and talked Zoopla, babies and Le Crueset. We played cricket with a fluo-rescent orange set, ate an extravagant picnic and strolled next to the waterfall and within the rose garden. We sort of flew a kite. It has become a sweet middle ground, with a miniature train, be-tween cities and one that we will probably, definitely return to.
Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 0X20 1PP
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