Blenheim Palace is one of England’s finest stately homes. It’s been selected as one of the 10 most magnificent in England, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is one of the 1000 Places to See Before You Die.
And, despite what one would expect of its princely pedigree. it’s a cheap day out with kids. Well, at least it is if you live close enough to take advantage of its annual pass offer. We do. My initial £19 investment in a ticket has paid dividends as we’ve now easily been a dozen times this year. All now in my mind “free.”
I’d gone to Blenheim Palace a couple of times during the pre-toddler era. But it wasn’t until I had the Little Monkey in tow that I really saw how great the place is. The family focused Pleasure Gardens in particular have become our “go-to” day out during the summer months. Now sadly fading away into winter…
First and foremost on our visits, we ride the train. Sir Winston Churchill takes us on a winding ride across the grounds.
And we LOVE the train. Sometimes we just stay on the train and ride it back and forth a few times because it’s just that cool.
We visit the Butterfly House, home to numerous species of tropical butterflies. And while we sweat profusely during the visit to this tropical climate, we enjoy spotting the butterflies as they fly around in the open all around us. Sometimes they narrowly miss our heads.
We play chess. Well, that is if either one of us knew how to play chess. Mostly we just move the pieces around and disrupt the games of other people playing actual games of chess.
We try to solve the colorful mazes. We ventured once into the Marlborough Maze, the second largest hedge maze in the world. But, I’ve since decided that doing this with a toddler is maybe not the best course of action. I mean, there are people out there trying to use advanced mathematics to solve this maze. Seriously. So we stick to the mazes that are out in the open.
We climb on the Adventure Playground. Full of ladders, slides, and bridges, it offers plenty of activities to help expend toddler energy.
And, finally, we slum around on the aristocracy’s front lawn playing silly games on the most perfect grass I’ve ever seen.
Penny Dale is a woman who knows her audience. Her book Dinosaur Dig has become a quick hit in our house as she has cleverly merged two subjects that little boys love (at least my little boy). What is it about dinosaurs and heavy machinery that instantly captures their attention?
Tonight, as has been the case for several nights, when I asked Little Monkey what bedtime story he wanted the answer was “Dinosaur Dig.” And, after reading it the first time and then offering to read another story, the answer was “No, Dinosaur Dig again.”
Recently, we were reading it and Little Monkey comes out and says “triceratops loader.” At first I’m not sure what he’s talking about. But then I realize that triceratops is indeed driving the loader in the story. I had not picked up on that. He’s not just been listening to me read it, he’s been analyzing it and associating elements of the story own his own. And, any book that does that for my child is pretty cool in my mind.
Books about diggers, cool.
Books about dinosaurs, really cool.
Books about dinosaurs AND diggers, awesome.
We’ve been told by one of the life long residents of our neighborhood that the area where our houses now stand was at one time an orchard. The abundance of apple and pear trees along the lane beside our house certainly supports this. And, the trees are now laden with fruit. So full of fruit that I wonder how the trees can bear the weight of their own branches.
This is where I fail as homemaker. I know that in theory I should fill a few buckets with apples and get busy making apple cobbler, apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie, apple cider, etc. but I just don’t have it in me. So instead, the fruit mostly just seems to end up on the ground, left to rot or feed the badgers and foxes. Granted, much of the fruit is so high I’d need more than my kitchen step stool to pluck a few apples.
So today, to keep from squashing them underfoot or with the lawnmower, we spent the mild autumn morning gathering pears off the ground. Thankfully, we had our very own dump truck in which to collect them.
Sometimes we needed to take a break from putting them in the dump truck and see how many we could line up along the wall.
And, we even found a snail-shell. No one was home though. Phew.
All in all, it was a good harvest today. Now, if I only knew what to do with it.
