Sunday, May 25, 2003

 

Day 32. Cricklade Wilts. Monday 26 May 2003. A Day to Remember

Blenheim Palace

Today was a bank holiday; a public holiday and Ian decided to take us to Blenheim Palace. Little did we realise the treat that was in store for us. The roads usually are busy from the holiday traffic so we travelled cross-country from Cricklade via mainly the minor roads, a distance of perhaps 45 miles to Woodstock just north of Oxford the home of Blenheim Palace.

We arrived at Woodstock just after mid-day and in time to lunch at a pleasant small cafe on the way down to Blenheim Palace. The town, tourist orientated was busy from the holiday traffic and parking was a little difficult.

We entered Blenheim Palace grounds by the town minor gate where traffic was light and paid our 10.50 each entrance fee and drove down to the large designated car park.

The Palace is set in grounds of 8500 acres and is the home of the Dukes of Marlborough. Sir Winston Churchill was born here. If the flag is flying from the corner tower this indicates that the present Duke is in residence. In this year of 2003 he is now 84 and resides in part of one wing of the huge Palace. His flag was flying indicating he was in residence but he was keeping a low profile. We couldn't have missed him; he is 6' 5" tall.

Our tickets gave us the opportunity of using a professional guide who assembled a group of us. As we waited I could not help but see a stuffed trout of huge proportions glass encased on the wall and as we waited the guide informed us the huge antique wine bowl on the table to our left was solid silver and weighed 84 kilograms.

I will be using the word "huge" a lot today until you are heartily sick of the word but... everything here was of huge.

We at last moved off and first we entered a display of Sir Winston Churchill. From letters as a boy to his parents when at boarding school through his life as a young man as war correspondent in the Boer war, and then much later WWII. Photographs aplenty while intoning in the background his famous rallying speech as British Prime Minister, the one, which put backbone into the British public when WWII was in its blackest phase and it seemed all, could be lost. Even today this famous speech still stirs the emotions.

The display then proceeded through to his later life, his paintings and his authored books, to the demise of his Conservative government in post WWII. A splendid display, I would have liked to go through this area again. It made a great impression on me especially his sad letters as a boy at school and his resolve to face the strictness and hold his chin up high.

We moved from room to room or should I say hall, huge rooms, painting after painting by the famous masters, ceiling paintings and intricate plasterwork... room upon room. Tapestries from floor to ceiling on 20 feet high or more walls and sometimes twice as wide. Another solid silver ornament even heavier than the 84kg wine bowl. The furniture and the china... every piece a masterpiece.

We finished our tour in the library 45 metres long... almost 150 feet. At one end the life size statue of Queen Anne, the benefactor of the 1st. Duke of Marlborough and at the other an extremely large pipe organ whose pipes stretched close to 30 feet in height.

Here our guide wish us farewell and hoped we had had and entertaining tour and we all clapped our appreciation and wanted to question him further. He was an elderly man and it was plain to see that he knew his subject thoroughly and as the questions during the tour flowed he answered them with out hesitation and then usually amplified on the answer. The icing on the cake was his impish sense of humour where humour was due.

Ian and I went for a long walk after the tour while Pat rested her weary feet. We walked through the mature trees coming out at the far end of the huge man-made lake. Coming back along the shore to a man-made waterfall feeding the lake, another huge feature. As we approached the boathouse on our return we could see the huge trout along the shoreline, equal at least in size to the huge glass encased one in the great hall.

Finding Pat on our return we entered down a flight of steps to the family chapel set at semi basement level. Seating for at least a hundred souls and choir pews. Like everything else the chapel was large!

It was cuppa teatime and a slice of old fashioned sticky treacle cake outside on one of the many patio's. We watched the ornamental pond and water fountain, and people as they came and went. Tired out we decided to head back to Cricklade. Crossing the great courtyard a car was parked in the corner near the Duke's quarters and I wondered if it was the Duke's vehicle. It looked tiny parked in this huge expanse of courtyard.

Journey back to Cricklade

We left Blenheim Palace by the main entrance in a queue of traffic and we were soon heading away from Woodstock on a narrow 2 lane ?A? road. Just after turning onto this road we witnessed a funny incident. The grass verge came down to meet the tar-sealed road and the grass verge would be about 8 to 10 inches above the road edge. Coming towards us was a cyclist pedalling steadily and appeared to not have a care in the world. Following him were 3 buses and 2 cars. They could not pass him because of vehicles moving in our direction and the narrowness of the road. The cyclist could not move onto the verge because of its raised height. At no point along the road was there a low point or an entrance for the cyclist to pull into and if the cyclist had stopped to pull his bike up onto the verge the front bumper of the bus was only a few feet from the cyclist's rear end. All this was glimpsed in a few moments of time and is now indelibly imprinted on my mind forever.

We made good time on our journey back; the heavy traffic was going in the opposite direction to us. Ian suggested we pull in at Lechlade and view the River Thames. We turned off down a little bumpy narrow right of way and landed on the riverbank and just outside of a pub. Here we spent a happy half hour with a pint each viewing the river, boats and swans in the warm, early evening setting sun. Ian told us of launching his boat here with Vicky and a little mishap. A story not to be repeated here!

Then on, a short journey to Cricklade arriving back at 6.30p.m. We had delicious salmon fillets for dinner, rounding off the ending of a very pleasant day.

Postscript

Writing up my prècis notes now some months later I realise for me at least this was one of the highlights of our travels. I wish now I could visit Blenheim Palace once more and spend more time. We certainly did not see everything in the Palace and we did not have the energy left to visit the Maze or other parts of the grounds. Underneath the Palace I found out when looking for the toilets and missing my way a warren of passageways and rooms and I suddenly realized the kitchens, the staff workplaces and undoubtedly other things were down here. I don't know if these were open for inspection... probably not.

posted by OldEric 9:41 pm