Blenheim the Beautiful

Almost a month back, I shared my photos from Blenheim Palace's Marlborough Maze in Oxfordshire.  I've been meaning to compile a post of photos and thoughts from the rest of the day, but as is often the case when you have a large quantity of photos to sift through and select, I kept putting it off.

No more! 

For those of you that don't know, Blenheim Palace is considered one of the finest historic country homes and estates in England and is the home of the family of famous English Prime Minster, Winston Churchill. 

We arrived on a none-too-sunny day and parked in the car park.  We then had to walk up the long driveway towards the house.  It cost  us £23 per person to enter the Palace, Park and Gardens which I thought was quite expensive but there is lots going on. Annoyingly, you can convert your ticket to allow you entry to the park for a year, but only if you do it on the day to find the little hut or do it online. Why not just sell us a year's ticket?

 Anyway, here are the impressive gates to the main home.

You enter through the gift shop and cafe (cunning) and find yourself in a central courtyard where you can see the orangerie, an exclusive restaurant.

Passing through the archway, you find your way to the main house.  What an impressive facade!

My photos don't do it justice, It is so imposing and impressive to stand before this fine building.  Everything is on a grand scale.

It began to rain, so we decided to head into the exhibition.

I was struck by those eyes staring down.

Inside, we weren't sure what to expect.  This chair looks a cosy place to read.

And what an amazing ceiling.
We stood in a queue for an interactive exhibition of the history of Blenheim which is cleverly told through the ghosts of some of the servants through robotic figures, puppetry, projections, screens. It certainly has an interesting history!
At that point, we had to exit and found ourselves in a restaurant, where we decided to have lunch.
It appeared, that there was no tour of any of the rooms of the house- I later found out, if you wanted a tour of selected parts of the private apartments, you had to pay extra.

Outside, the rain had stopped, so we stopped to admire the beauty of the water terraces with little maze-like formations.

The fountains were beautiful and arresting. These were supposedly modelled on the Parterre d'Eau at Versailles.

Leading away from the palace, we went to explore the gardens, which were,in my opinion, the best part of the trip.

Capability Brown was involved in the planting of these gardens so they have an amazing statuesque beauty and excellent structure..  I enjoyed these beautiful bright flowers.

As we walked, we saw the quintessential mark of a historical garden of a certain era, a grotto- which sadly was not open to the public.

There were some pretty ancient-looking trees, I am fascinated by the many arms of this lofty fellow.

The use of water in the gardens of Capability Brown are breathtaking and situated perfectly and I loved the waterlillies on the water. We saw a private boathouse that looked like it contained enough boats for the Oxford-Cambridge race.

One of my favourite parts was this beautiful cascading waterfall created by the aforementioned Capability Brown. You could hear the water as you approached by winding downward paths so by the time you reached the fountain, you were excited about what the noise was caused by!

We stood on the bridge a while to admire the water and listen to the mesmerising sounds.

Onwards, we strolled to the beautiful rose gardens. I can imagine this was wonderful earlier in the season.

The sight of raindrops on the roses was something beautiful to behold even if the roses were not at their prime time.

We continued onwards, finding ourselves within the sight of the palace again from a different angle.

There were some very eccentric looking trees, including this very hollowed out one.

The next place we found was the secret garden which held some beautiful paths, waterfeatures and a beautiful pagoda.

Continuing on, passing the Memorial Garden of Churchill (not pictured), we came back to the palace to meet up with J, CBC's mum.

Coming from this angle, we glimpsed some views of the picturesque Italian formal gardens which are part of the private part of Blenheim.

Next, we decided to board the train down to the maze and the butterfly house.

 I've already shared the maze, but my photos of the butterfly house weren't very good.

There's a full day of activities at Blenheim and even on a rainy day, we were able to enjoy them!

Have you been?

xxx