We loved seeing the traditions played out, the sense of companionship, the noise and sights, and there was something about seeing mostly middle-aged and older people taking part in public group activities to the enjoyment of other people that reminded me somewhat of our time in China at the Temple of Heaven.

As the day wore on votes were cast and a new mayor was elected, thenceforth to be carried around by other members of the Abingdon morris dancers.

Since my wife had a close connection with one of the morris side members we were granted special dispensation to attend the evening’s entertainment later that day. The surroundings and music were wonderfully medieval and it proved to be a fabulous end to a thoroughly interesting day in Oxfordshire.

There are a few more photos from the election of 2012’s Mayor of Ock Street in Abingdon on Flickr – Abingdon Mayor’s Day 2012.

Although it’s called a palace it’s really just a country house, albeit one on a huge scale and with sprawling grounds and gardens to explore. At the time of our visit it wasn’t possible to take photographs inside the building itself so the pictures accompanying this post will simply cover the exterior spaces.

After you’ve parked your car there is a walk of around two hundred metres until you reach the East Courtyard where you can find the ubiquitous tourist attraction souvenir shop. Proceeding through that courtyard you then reach the main courtyard and main views of the building. Built in the very early part of the eighteenth century in the not-very-well-known and short-lived English Baroque style, Blenheim was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh and intended as a reward for military successes against the French by the First Duke of Marlborough whose family name of Churchill (later Spencer-Churchill) you’ll likely be familiar with. Indeed, Winston Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace.

We briefly headed away from the palace building where a long road stretched out ahead, crossing over the River Glyme and leading towards a distant monument. After consulting the map we had at the time we ultimately decided not to make the walk to see what was in the distance but if we had then we would have discovered that it was the Column of Victory and the wording on its base (source: Wikisource) reads:

Most Gracious Sovereign, Whereas the Eminent and Unparalleled Services Performed to Your Majesty and the Crown of ENGLAND by the most Noble IOHN Duke of MARLBOROUGH are well known not only to Your Majesty and all Your Subjects but to all EUROPE, who will always Remember That the Alliances which Your Majesty’s Royal Brother King WILLIAM the Third of Glorious Memory, had, in a little time before His Death Contracted by the Ministry of the said Duke of MARLBOROUGH as His Majesty’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the STATES-GENERAL of the United-Provinces for Preserving the Liberties of EUROPE against the Ambition of FRANCE, were immediately after Your Majesty’s Happy Accession to the Throne by the said Duke, then Imployed by Your Majesty in the same Character, Confirmed and Improved, and others were Contracted, whereby the Confederacy which had been Dissolved at the End of the last War, was Reunited in a Stricter and Firmer League; And that in the First Year of Your Majesty’s Reign, the said Duke of MARLBOROUGH did so well execute the Commission and Orders which He received from Your Majesty as Captain-General and Commander in Chief of Your Majesty’s Forces, That He not only Secured and Extended the Frontier of HOLLAND by Taking the Towns and Fortresses of VENLO, RUREMOND, STEVENSWAERT and LIEGE, but soon obliged the Enemy (who had been at the Gates of NIMEGHEN) to seek Shelter behind their Lines.

Yes, so let’s not hear any more crap about me writing long, run-on sentences on this site any more, okay?

There is another reason to head towards the column, though, and that is that just beyond the bridge, among the trees to the left, there is a tree called the Harry Potter Tree as it featured in one of the films. If you’re a fan of the franchise of books or movies then you might enjoy the experience of seeing it in real life but we didn’t know about it at the time and sufficed ourselves with some simple landscape views from near the courtyard gates.

We headed back to the main building of Blenheim Palace and me being me, photos were taken. The weather during our visit threatened to rain for the entire time but never quite managed it, thankfully.

As stated near the top of this post we weren’t able to take pictures inside the palace during our visit but as we entered through the main portico we noticed some highly unusual artwork adorning the ceiling: three blue eyes and three brown eyes. These were at the behest of the second wife of the ninth Duke of Marlborough and their combined history as it pertains to Blenheim Palace is very interesting indeed.

The ninth duke was Charles Spencer-Churchill who inherited Blenheim and his title in 1892 at a time of near-bankruptcy for the estate. His solution to those financial problems was to marry into money, and the wealthy Vanderbilt family liked the idea of having a duchess in the family so a marriage of not-quite-convenience was enforced upon Consuelo Vanderbilt. There was no love in the union even though it did produce two sons (referred to by their mother as “the heir and the spare”), by 1906 Consuelo had left her husband, and by 1921 they were divorced.

However, during the late 1890s a French-American woman who had become friends with Consuelo also moved into Blenheim Palace. This was Gladys Deacon and she was destined to become Charles’ mistress then wife for a short time from 1921 to 1926. Gladys had a reputation as something of a beauty with many men said to fall in love with her, and she had an artistic eye too; and it’s her eyes in blue that decorate the portico of the building. It’s not the only striking presence of Gladys you can find in the grounds of Blenheim, though, as you’ll see in pictures from the water terraces later. The marriage became strained when Charles converted to Roman Catholicism and Gladys reportedly carried a loaded gun with her to protect her from the duke.

After our visit inside the building we headed outside to explore the gardens and grounds surrounding Blenheim Palace. Adjacent to each wing of the building is a formal garden. We started on the southwestern side of the palace which held the Water Terraces. As the name implies these were a series of ponds and fountains set over a couple of levels leading down from the building to the river running alongside the property.

The central, paved area of the lower terrace was flanked by some interesting sculptures: sphinxes with the head of Gladys Deacon. She was most certainly a character.

From the Water Terraces we followed a path along the River Glyme and this led us in short order to the Rose Garden.

I’m not the biggest fan of flowers in general – they’re pretty, they serve a useful purpose, but I just don’t find them particularly interesting beyond macro photography of their petals from time to time – and for some reason roses are amongst the flowers I like least. That’s just the way I am. This is my way of explaining that we didn’t stay long in the rose garden although if it’s something that excites you there looked to be plenty of varieties of rose growing.

We continued in the direction we’d been taking and this brought us to the Grand Cascade. The cascade is one of a number of cascades in the grounds and was created when the river was dammed during the fourth Duke of Marlborough’s ownership in order to create the lake at Blenheim Palace and transform the landscape into a quintessentially English one under the guidance of Capability Brown.

We made our way back to the main building, passing briefly through the Water Terrace garden area once more where I amused myself taking one of the photos of the statues, then onto the Italian Gardens off the northeastern wing. Overall, this was a much more subdued garden with all the showiness present in the interesting topiary of the hedges and of the somewhat gaudy fountain in the middle of the central pond.

Next stop on our tour of the grounds of Blenheim Palace was the Secret Garden, a pleasant and secluded area with pond and a small waterfall and some stones with interesting markings on them.

Leaving the secret garden I was clearly possessed of the urge to get some photos of statues and patterns amongst the tiles and pillars and columns of the nearby buildings featured heavily too. When you get the urge, you get the urge.

The East Gate of Blenheim Palace is worth a quick mention from an architectural point-of-view as you might notice that its upper half tapers slightly. The effect isn’t noticeable from a distance but as a person walks towards and through the gate this design helps to create an illusion of taller and thus more impressive edifice.

Our final stop was at the Marlborough Hedge Maze. Basically, if there’s a maze in a place then we’re going to have a go at the maze. If there’s a choice of visiting two places and one of them has a maze then the maze place will win a visit from us. We’re fond of a maze is the gist of what I’m getting at here. The hedge maze at Blenheim Palace is made from yew trees and while I can’t remember precisely how we did on our visit I can be fairly certain we didn’t get trapped.

If you get decent weather that doesn’t prevent you from enjoying the grounds and gardens as well as the main house then you can easily spend half a day or more at Blenheim Palace and it’s well worth paying it a visit to do so.

One of the biggest hurdles we faced ahead of this trip to Oxford was picking a hotel because, it turns out, Oxford absolutely hates the idea of anyone from outside the city coming to it for a stay somewhere. Could we find car parks? Yes. Could we find hotels? Yes. Could we find hotels with car parks? Not so easily. And worse, the hotels all seemed to be in residents parking zones so the option of parking on the road nearby got thrown out of the window. I have feelings about these zones and those feelings are that they should all be removed countrywide, and anyone who supports them should be shot into the sun.

Anyway, we eventually settled for The Galaxie as it was a good price, had parking, and seemed like it would be an easy walk into the city for exploring during the day. The hotel proved to be a very nice one – you can see photos below of our room because people really like to see photos of hotel rooms and I’m feeling in a helpful mood – but the parking wasn’t the ideal solution we’d hoped for. The car park was small. While we were able to find a spot to park on arrival, it would prove to be handy that we didn’t plan on moving the car the following day as it was blocked in from that point. The day after that we’d need to get the hotel staff to find the owner of another car to move it out of our way so we could head off for the day and we’d end up not being able to park when returning, leading to a lot of driving around to find somewhere that didn’t have parking restrictions. I’m sure I’ll mention this again when I get around to writing about that day’s activities later in this Oxford weekender series.

As we’d driven up on a Friday evening after work we decided not to walk the fair distance into Oxford for the first night and instead headed a few hundred metres away to The Dewdrop Inn just to grab a bite to eat and a few drinks. It was a very nice pub, had good service, and did some very nice cocktails.

The next morning started with breakfast in the hotel’s conservatory; a lovely setting.

Our plan for our first full day in Oxford was a simple one: walk into Oxford and see what grabbed our attention. Our hotel was based on Banbury Road and simply following its length would take us into the city centre. Just before it reached that point, however, we could see there was a large park off to one side and we figured we’d have a walk around that as we were setting off early enough that nothing would likely be open by the time we reached sites of interest. The walk along Banbury Road was abut one and a half kilometres long and lined with plenty of interesting architecture to admire.

The park we’d seen was called University Parks. Plural. It just looked like one park to us but fine, Oxford, you be you and pluralise it. We ended up walking a full circuit and managed to avoid being run over by the hordes of joggers using it. The park was a nice green space; nothing spectacular about it, although it did host a nice pond. We’d also spotted on the map that there was something called the “J.R.R. Tolkien Bench” which we thought might be a historically interesting spot that the author used to sit at or perhaps a bench in a style that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Middle Earth. Yeah, let’s just say that if you go to University Parks to see this bench then make sure you’re wearing your Pants of Disappointment.

The walk around the park was nice enough and ate up enough time for us to make our first stop of the day; this would be at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

One of the first things we admired in the museum was the building itself. This dates from the nineteenth century and is a delightful example of Victorian neo-Gothic architecture with a fabulous glass and iron roof.

There was plenty to enjoy at the museum if you’ve got any interest in palaeontology or evolution or mineralogy, as you can no doubt tell from the photos above. One of the things we particularly liked was being able to touch an iron meteorite that had come from the asteroid belt. How could we not?

Connected to the natural history museum was the Pitt Rivers Museum so we popped in there too. This is a building that houses an immense amount of artefacts from all over the world and from all periods. While there was a lot to see here we found that a lot of it was repetitive and it was hard to be excited by, for example, the twentieth example of a Buddha statue. Doubtlessly, for people doing research Pitt Rivers must be a fabulous treasure trove of dates and details, but our general feeling was that this was closer to an antiques shop than a museum. Still interesting, still worth a look, but we weren’t wowed by the place.

We enjoyed the two museums here overall, though, and with them being free to enter there’s no reason to not visit them if you’re in Oxford.

That concludes this first part of our weekend visit to Oxford. In the next post in this series we’ll be continuing our museum theme and visiting the city’s most famous example of one, the Ashmolean.

This visit to the Ashmolean took place in August 2022 and was part of a weekend break in Oxford. Prior to looking around Oxford’s most famous museum we’d looked around the Natural History and Pitt Rivers museums following a walk from our hotel.

For us, and I imagine for many people, the stand-out items on display at the Ashmolean were those from the Egyptian, Roman, and Assyrian collections, but if you like paintings, sculptures, or treasures such as rare violins or timepieces then you will find something to interest you.

In the next post in this series covering our short stay in Oxford we’ll be visiting the Botanic Garden and rewarding our morning and afternoon’s cultural tour of the city with a small wander around some of its pubs. It’s what we do.

After a quick stop for something to eat and a few drinks we set off instead for the botanic gardens. This took us along Oxford’s High Street and past architecture quite typical for the area. Several colleges and University Church of St Mary the Virgin were among the landmarks that we strolled past.

The Oxford Botanic Garden was founded in 1621 as a physic garden – a garden for growing herbs for use in medicinal research – and today houses over five thousand species of flowers and plants. Situated along the banks of the River Cherwell – where people could be seen punting along it with varying degrees of success – it is broadly arranged in three sections: the Glasshouses, the Lower Garden, and the Walled Garden.

We started our wander through the garden with the Glasshouses. Numerous climate zones were represented in the occasionally cramped and very warm spaces here: a cloud forest, a water lily pond, a rainforest, a carnivorous plants house, and an arid zone for cactuses. Each had its appeal, but I’m always drawn to pitcher plants for some reason. It’s because I was a fly in a previous life.

We’re not botanists and our knowledge of flowers in general is extremely small, but the plants on show were attractive, some were clearly exotic and not native to these shores, and, ultimately, when it comes to nature, you either like it or you don’t. I won’t pretend to try to determine what each plant was, but if you’ve got an interest in flowers or what sorts of plants grow in different climates then it’s a great way to spend an hour or two.

It was good to get outside and into some fresh air after exploring the Glasshouses; as I mentioned, they could be a little cramped with a sensible one-way system of exploring their interior spaces that was only mostly observed by people visiting on the same day that we were there. The outside garden spaces were more typical of what you’d find in any English estate, but there were areas given over to medicinal herbs still among rare plants too.

One other area of the Walled Garden was the literary walk. It is known that authors such as Lewis Carroll and J.R.R. Tolkien visited Oxford Botanic Garden, and if you’re a fan of the His Dark Materials books by Philip Pullman or its TV adaptation then the bench that Will and Lyra pledge to sit on at noon each Midsummer’s Day in their respective worlds is located in the garden too, and quite likely smothered with other fans at that time if you’re thinking it might be nice to pop along there and do so as well.

That ended up being enough of Oxford’s cultural and historical elements for one day for us, and we would spend the rest of this day visiting some pubs. What can I say? We like pubs.

In the next post in this UK city break travelogue series we’ll be heading out from Oxford to take a look at the National Trust property of Stowe.

We didn’t get up to much in Abingdon but it’s a very picturesque town and somebody might want to see some photos of it.

We ate up a little time before intruding by taking a quick walk around the Abbey Gardens then strolled our usual route past St Helen’s church and along the part of the Thames that snakes through Abingdon.

There was some minor excitement here when we happened upon a group of men on motorbikes, mopeds, and scooters, all gathered outside one of the houses on the waterfront. They looked like they were up to no good – well, it looked like they were in the act of stealing a bike from that house – but as we got nearer one of them came over to us and told us that they were delivery drivers and were recovering a bike that had been stolen from one of them a few days before, using the tracker on it to locate the house. It sounded plausible and we certainly weren’t going to make a big deal of it.