It turned out that Nicola also had this week off so we decided to a day trip out of London somewhere. First choice was Hatfield House - which I've been wanting to go to for years... And almost made it with Leigh and Maurie this year, except that I realised at the last minute that the house wasn't open on the day we were going. And this time Nicola checked to find out that the house isn't open over winter! I am fated to not go I feel...
Anyhow, second choice fell to Blenheim Palace - which had been a possible for Tracey's visit, but we'd run out of time when she was here.
However this was a successful choice and we duly headed off. It is the seat of the Duke of Marlborough (the current one is 82 years old, but he has a heir, and the heir also has an heir so the line looks pretty safe for a while yet...) and also where Winston Churchill was born. As the was the 'spare' he was never the Duke - just went on to lead a small country for a few years... The Palace is lovely - and the family still live there in private apartments. Lots of lovely tapestries to look at (which I have to admit did start to all look the same) - most of which depict the victorious Duke of Marlborough at the Battle of Blenheim. The grounds are gorgeous - created originally by Capability Brown - who didn't do the formal look as I thought, but created man made grounds that looked natural (ah - the things I learn from Nicola!).
We went for a nice stroll around some of the grounds (and saw many pheasants), and then made the mistake of doing the new visitor experience 'Blenheim Palace - the Untold Story' which was rubbish. It wasn't the untold story - we'd heard most of it in the tour, and once you got into it you couldn't escape until each room was complete. Very tedious. And sadly that meant we didn't get time to complete the maze (the 2nd largest hedge one in Europe apparently). We did go into it, and got far enough to get to the top of one of the footbridges, but then the Palace man (not the Duke sadly) came and told us we only had 10 mins to complete it and we didn't think we could solve it in 10 mins so Nicola retraced our steps and we went back out where we had come in. I say 'we' - really it was Nicola - I was just following her!
We also checked out the Butterfly House which was very cool - lots of live butterflys flying around, although I did take pictures of some of the dead ones... And Nicola fooled me into thinking one of them was alive by blowing on its wings... I got quite excited for a while until I realised how hard she was laughing at me...
Then we went and had a very nice pint of ale while we waited for the bus back to Oxford - lovely day out! A couple of pics below, but more on Flickr so make sure you check them out!
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