The next
morning, after a round of bacon sandwiches, we wandered next door to Blenheim
Palace, the former home of the Churchills, the most famous being Winston. It is
a big, beautiful stately palace and gardens which now serves as a museum about
the Churchills, and is lived in by the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. We started with a wander
around the gardens. We did have to dodge the odd rain shower but overall
managed to stay reasonably dry. There is a massive lake out the back of the
palace so we took a walk along the shores of that, checking out the birds and
plants which were all around. We then wandered back up through the middle of
the garden, stopping to smell the roses, before we arrived back at the palace.
We stopped for some tea and scones (along with hundreds of other tourists…) but
as we didn’t mind sitting in the rain we didn’t have too much trouble getting a
table outside. After a bite to eat we took a wander through the part of the
palace which was open for public access. It was interesting to see all of the
family memorabilia although the amount of it was a little overwhelming. Instead of doing the guided tour (complete
with ghost story) we went across the Vanbrugh's Grand bridge where we chilled out a bit on
the other side and were witness to a guy proposing to his girlfriend (awesome).
Although the spot he had chosen was a little bit heavy on the duck poo. After
that spot of romance we made our way through the palace one last time and got
ourselves across to the butterfly house down the road. It wasn’t exactly
teeming with butterflies but the ones we saw seemed to be happy enough. Along
with the butterfly house there was also a street of mini buildings which we
think was supposed to look like the main street of Woodstock`. No stately home is
complete without a hedge maze, so we spent some time wandering through there
(can you work out what word the letters in the hedge spell?) After being worn
out by all that walking we took the token tourist train back to the entrance of
Blenheim Palace where we were lucky enough to be able to visit a local arts and
crafts fair. Even better this was a proper arts and crafts fair with real
artists and artisans showing and selling their wares. There were sculptors and
potters and carvers and all sorts of other people showing original interest
in art, not just the usual tat. Amy was very pleased with her painters' box purchase. It had been a big day so far but it wasn’t yet
over. We took a stroll through the picturesque town of Woodstock. It really was
everything you imagined an English Country town to be with stone buildings
covered in Ivy and pubs and cobblestones. We decided to head to one of the pubs on
the outskirts of town as we had noticed it had a cool water wheel on it. After
sampling some local ales and playing a couple of rounds of the new worldwide
phenomenon “Stop the Bus” we made our way back to the campsite for some well
earned rest. We had some uncertainty as to how the weather was going to hold so
we managed to get the awning on the side of the van raised for the first time
with a bit of duct tape to hold it all together. It was then an evening of red
wine and Backpackers before turning in.The next day we all piled into Minty for a trip further afield into the wider Cotswalds. Our first stop was Chipping Norton which left us feeling slightly underwhelmed. We were able to find some water at the supermarket, so it wasn’t a total write off though…Luckily the town of Moreton in Marsh redeemed any misconceptions we may have had. It is the site of the White Hart Royal Hotel which housed King Charles during part of his time in exile. The Costwalds is a very royalist area. The craft market wasn’t up to the standard of the day before but that was OK, because we treated ourselves to a tasty cream tea before checking out the crazy array of teapots in some of the other tea rooms. There was everything from the
standard yellow
teapot to the three wheeled van from Only Fools and Horses. We continued along
our way to the town of Stow on the Wold, where the wind blows cold. Stow on the
Wold is situated on the top of a hill so is apparently very windy. There
certainly was a chill in the air. The tourists had heard about it too
obviously, as there were plenty around. We checked out the local church, which
had a cool looking entrance where the trees had grown all around it. Then it
was back into town for a pint at the old pub. Unfortunately they had had it
redecorated so only the roof beams were still old but it was nice to have a pint
nonetheless. It was then back to in the van and off to Upper Slaughter (via
Lower Slaughter) for a short walk through the countryside. We ran into one of
Ian’s old workmates who was perhaps slightly over the top in her reaction to
seeing someone unexpected but as always Ian played it cool. Our last stop of
the day was the town of Bourton on the Water, home of a miniature version of itself. And within
the miniature version was a miniature version of the miniature version!!
Crazy!! There is only so much excitement you can take in one day so we made our
way back to the campsite with plans for a nice pub dinner. However, it turns
out virtually everything closes on a Sunday night so we wandered the whole town
before eventually agreeing to a curry. They couldn’t fit us in straight away so
we went for more of a walk where, purely by chance, we did find a pub that was
serving food, and it was decent food at that. Joyously we tucked into our tasty
dinners before tucking ourselves in to bed.
We awoke to
torrential rain on the last day of our weekend away. Fortunately we had packed
most of our stuff up the night before so it was all stowed safely in the vans.
We weren’t sure whether we should just pack it in and head back to London, but
in true NZ style we carried on and decided to go see the Uffington White Horse, a chalk horse drawn on the hill in
Somerset. Different Sat Navs took us different directions but we both got there
in the end, although the rain followed us too. We couldn’t really get much of a
view of the horse so we wandered across the hills, battling our umbrellas,
until we got a close up look. It was pretty cool how the ditches had been dug
into the hill and then filled with stones which were covered in chalk. Some
brave souls were out touching up the chalk that day but I am not sure how well
their progress was going in the rain. We were all thoroughly soaked by the time
we got back to the vans. Fortunately the beauty of having a van is that you can
get changed into dry clothes straight away! We took in a decent pub lunch at the Fox and Hound before thanking each other for the weekend and making our way back
to London, our first proper weekend away in the Iceberg a success.https://picasaweb.google.com/JessicaLMcMillan/CotswaldsMay2011
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