| BLENHEIM PALACE
July 5, Thursday
Finally, on Thursday, July 5, we got to Blenheim Palace, seat of the Duke of Marlborough, and where Winston Churchill was born, spent much of his time, and proposed to his wife.
While we were in Stratford-upon-Avon on Wednesday, remember, we contracted with the 007 Hackney Cab in Stratford to come to our country cottages, pick us up, and take us to the Bridge Street bus stop in Stratford. The Whitley Elm Cottages are down a narrow lane in, we have found out, an obscure corner of the England. The cottages and farmhouse are hidden from the lane by high hedges. Arthur and Jennie, being locals, had no trouble finding it, but other cabbies certainly have. Knowing this, we all walked out to the end of the farm drive on narrow Case Lane and waited for the cabs there. Seven people with daypacks are hard to miss. Two minutes after eight the two 007 cabs pulled up. They had got lost twice, but still arrived on time and delivered us on time to the bus stop.
Bus 50 for Chipping Norton pulled up; we climbed on, bought tickets straight through to Blenheim Palace, and settled in. The ride was as good as a tour. We passed through picturesque pastoral countryside and quaint Cotswold villages. At Chipping Norton we made a fast change to Stagecoach Service 20 for the last short lap to the gates of Blenheim Palace. People had told us the bus stopped at the gates of Blenheim Palace. Well, that was almost correct.
The bus stopped in Woodstock. People got off, people got on. We all sat complacently and looked around. We sailed pass a signpost to Blenheim Palace. We were following a drystone wall. We knew a drystone wall encircled Blenheim. We watched for gates. No gates. The drystone walls ended. The bus kept going. It occurred to three or four of us all at once that we missed our stop. Craig ran up to the front. The bus pulled over abruptly behind a parked lorry loaded with pulp logs. We jumped off. The bus roared away. And…there we were.
As one, we did an about face and tramped along a path through the high grass back towards Woodstock and Blenheim Palace. After not too far, the path became an asphalt walkway along the drystone walls. It was, we all agreed, a nice country stroll on a sunny English morning.
The gates to Blenheim Palace, when we came upon them, were monumental stone pillars holding great black wrought-iron gates. So how could we have missed them? First of all, they were a half-mile or more from the bus stop in Woodstock, where we now knew we should have gotten off the bus. Secondly, they were not at roadside, but at the end of a short curving drive, partly hidden from the road by dense greenery. Thirdly, we weren't watching closely enough. Not that it would have mattered, since the bus didn't stop there anyway.
With a collective sigh of relief, we passed through the gates. We were finally at Blenheim Palace-uh, sort of. We stopped on the drive and peered into the distance. Far, far, away down the road was what looked like more huge gates in a stone wall. We hitched up our packs and forged onward. If we thought the first set of gates were impressive, the second set was monumental. There were two gold and black doors about twenty feet high set into an elaborately carved stone entrance wall. One was pushed partly open to admit visitors, and there were visitors! Buses belched old age pensioners and gaggles of students. Cars poured down the avenue.
We walked through the doors into a large courtyard, across that courtyard, through a tunnel-like approach to the central courtyard and palace itself. And it is a palace! Columns, wide steps, sculptures in niches and on top of towering walls surrounded the courtyard. Banners and signs announced various displays on Winston Churchill, the Second World War, and tours of the elegant state rooms inside the palace wings and towers. It was overwhelming, really. We decided we'd better start with lunch.
By the time we got to the Water Garden tearoom, it was near noon. We had thought to have a hot lunch, but we were too early and the hot food wouldn't be available until 1:00. So we had sandwiches, soup, and cream scones. A window wall of the tearoom overlooked terraced formal gardens. Tall lacy fountains fell into shallow pools; statues on pedestals accented sculptured greenery. Steps and arches beckoned to more beauty beyond.
After lunch we each went our own way to tour the palace and grounds. Some headed to the historical exhibits and tour of the castle state rooms. The gardens called to me. The noted landscape architect Capability Brown designed the acres of carefully orchestrated lawns and woods accented with flower gardens, as at Warwick. We didn't have time to do the gardens at Warwick. I didn't want to miss them here.
For two hours I walked the lanes of Blenheim parklands. I found the Grecian folly where Churchill proposed to Clementine. The rose garden was a faeryland of arbors; the splashing cascades were framed by wildflowers, an arched bridge and olden stone cottage. I strolled through a flowery Secret Garden, discovered sculptures in hidden nooks, and peeked over the boxwood hedge into the parterre Italian Garden.
That's all that was allowed, a peek at the Italian gardens. They are private to the Duke of Marlborough, who still lives part time at the palace. I can understand that. When the Duke and Duchess gaze out their windows, they don't want to look at gaggles of tourists wandering around, I'm sure. We oglers may be a financial necessity, but that doesn't mean they want to have us peering in their windows. There is, for an additional fee, a tour of the family's private apartments given then the Duke and Duchess are elsewhere. None of us took it. Bob and I had been on it before, and the others weren't interested.
I had also seen the castle exhibits on an earlier visit, but thought I'd better swing through them in case something new had been added. In the last exhibit, a new one, I ran into Gordy and Lisa and Josh. I told them I was heading for the tram ride down to the bottom of the garden for the garden shop, a pleasure garden, and the butterfly house. Josh wanted to go along, so off we went, the two of us, to see the world. Well, to see the butterfly house, anyway.
The open tram had green and white awning striped above, and a little puffer steam engine in front. Josh chose the last bench seat in the last car of the trolley. To our great joy, the engine detached itself from the front of the trolley, puffed past us on a companion track, and hooked onto our end of the train. Josh and I knelt on the seat, and the engine hooked to the train with a clunk and clank right under our noses.
We spent some time in the butterfly house finding new colors of butterflies and watching four koi swim lazily back and forth under a little bridge. It thundered. Rain splatted on the plastic cover of the butterfly house and ran in rivulets down the walls. We just played with the koi and the butterflies. When we tired of that, we went into the garden shop. Surprise! There were Lisa and Gordy, just in time to say “no” to Josh's begging for a large beetle embalmed in plastic.
The rain let up, though it remained overcast and grey. We four strolled through the Pleasure Garden. Billows of lavender lined the paths, both white and purple, and their mild scent filled the air. It was truly a pleasure garden, an aromatic sensory pleasure of lavender.
Beyond the Pleasure Garden we found a large chess game with almost three foot high pieces, and a hedge maze. Josh was all for the maze. The day was wearing one. We would just go into the maze a little way and come back out. The average time of the maze solution was forty-five minutes. We wouldn't spend that much time on it. Just a little venture into it, and right back out. We marched into that maze, never to be seen again-almost. Up one alley, down another, turn around and try again. Two gray umbrellas were also playing in the maze. We'd see them t9o our left, bobbing along, then on our right, sometimes close, sometimes far, but never in our path. Wooden steps led to a viewing platform in the maze. From the top we would see the center of the maze, and a way out. Back down in the bushes, our carefully mapped route crumbled.
We were up and down to the platform at least three times, maybe four. The third time, or fourth, of fifth, we discovered that there were two identical platforms in the maze. When we thought we were in one place, we were actually in another. No matter where we were, the two gray umbrellas bobbed along somewhere else in through the sculpted green alleys.
We could at least figure out from the viewing platforms that our objective was not the gate cut in the hedgerows, but the center of the maze. A circle of lower hedges, trimmed to spell “Blenheim” when seen from the viewing platforms, encircled a sculpture of Mercury on a pedestal. What we had to do was get to that central circle, and there was a straight path from Mercury out of the maze.
We tried; we really tried. Josh would flit down one lane; Gordy would head down another, and Lisa and I would go around and around a single round bush. The more lost we got, the funnier it was. We laughed our way under a viewing platform, down a lane to the left and wow! There was Mercury. We almost hated to leave, it was so much fun. But the skies were lowering again and our tummies felt like tea.
By the time we got to the tram stop a misty rain was falling. The tram sat empty and dripping. We dragged up our hoods and walked back to the palace tearoom. While Lisa and Gordy organized tea and sweets, I ran about looking for and gathering the others. I mean literally ran. I didn't know I had it in me. I saw Craig and Amy's L. L. Bean's aqua umbrellas bob into the gate between the courtyards. I ran across the vast central courtyard, collected them and sent them off to the tearoom.
I had no idea where Bob was. Luckily his stomach said it was teatime, and he emerged from the gates of the small courtyard where he had been hiding out of the rain in a gift shop. I ran and waved my arms and got his attention. We walked together back to the tearoom. There was a large round table in the tearoom laden with wonderful-looking cakes and slices that we had all drooled over earlier in the day. We each got one of those sweets, and passed them around the table. By the time we left, we were well fortified with tea and chocolate-mocha cake, carrot cake, scones and cream, and vanilla slice to make the trip back to the cottages.
We walked through the various gates, courtyards, and a final gift shop on the way out of the palace. There must have been four gift shops scattered around the palace and grounds, and the only way out of the place was through this last gift shop. Once through that, the long road to the steetside gates stretched ahead of us.
About a third of the way we came upon a sandwich board sign in the road telling us that the main gate was closed and we must use a side gate off the grounds. So we did, hoods up and umbrellas held high against the persistent rain. The gate was a tall arched wooden door in the drystone wall. We pushed open the door-and stepped into the town of Woodstock.
The streets were deserted. Shops were closed. Nothing we could see looked remotely like a bus stop. The mists and faint lowering sun tinted the town with a yellow cast, as if it were lit by candles. What to do? Well, walk until you stumble into someone or somewhere. We did that. We came to a Y intersection. Now what?
Luckily, Bob spotted a fellow sitting in a parked car nearby, as asked for directions. Take the street to the left and the bus stop is at the end. We did that, and arrived in a dead heat with Bus Service 20. We actually ran beside the bus as it slowed into the curb to make sure it would stop for us. It did. We clambered aboard and collapsed into the seats with a sigh of relief.
In a half-hour we tumbled off the bus and into the rain again in the village of Chipping Norton. The cottages of the Cotswolds disappeared into the rains, along with the dream of a leisurely scenic bus ride past them in evening's light. The longer we waited for Service 50 to Stratford-upon-Avon, the colder we got. We huddled against the plastic wall of the minimal bus shelter or ducked into a nearby narrow alley to escape the chill winds and pelting rain. I'm not sure how long we waited, roughly forever or slightly longer, long enough to render all of us completely miserable. The bus did come, though, and we did get back to Stratford-upon-Avon in good time to make the last train to Hatton.
In Stratford, the rain dwindled to the light mist, and the temps dropped a few more degrees. It was a ten-minute walk to the train station from the bus drop. When we got to the station, we huddled behind the four-foot high wooden wall along the top walk of the track cross-over bridge and watched our train-not watched for our train, watched our train.
There it sat on the track, with the doors locked. The engineer was probably taking his tea someplace warm and cozy before starting the long trip back to London's Marylebone Station. We were freezing on the bridge. Others were freezing on the platform. Every now and then someone would dart out from behind the locked waiting room building and push the door-open button, then dash back for the wind cover of the building. We just watched, seven pairs of eyes peering over the bridge parapet at a train.
Just after 8:15 p.m. the door lights glowed green. We thundered down the wooden steps, punched the button, and reached sanctuary. At 20:30, on time, the train moved slowly, then more quickly, down the track. There were two local stops before Hatton. Twenty minutes from Stratford-upon-Avon we were off the train and warmed by the welcoming smiles and open taxi doors, once again, of Arthur and Jennie.
A DAY AT THE COTTAGES
July 6, Friday
I need to tell the sheep story before we go on. There were, as I said earlier, eight or ten (hornless) rams rambling around the meadow where our cottages sat. They were our constant companions and amusement. We watched while they grazed. We noted when they ruminated. We got all excited if they came up close to the windows, and complained that we could hardly see them when they took shelter under far trees from the rain.
We did notice, early in the week, that one white-face ram had a sore back right leg. At first it just limped a little. Then the limp became more pronounced. The ram still grazed and ruminated as usual. The leg didn't seem to bother him enough to affect his habits. However, one evening, he fell when he tried to put weight on the leg. But he got right up. Over the space of an hour or so, he fell twice more.
We held a conference and debated what to do. We knew no one around the farm, or even whether the sheep belonged to the owners of Whitley Elm or not. The cottage owners, our landlords, were not at home in the big farmhouse. The lady had gone into the hospital early in the week for surgery for liver cancer. Her husband, just out of the hospital himself, spent his days with her. Whitley Elm was more or less on its own except for us tourist types.
The last time the sheep fell, it didn't get up. He was not fully down on his side, just sitting. He continued to graze on the grass he could reach around himself. I thought about calling Arthur the taxi man or walking down the lane to the pub to see if something could be done. But a curious thing happened.
When other sheep moved to the far side of the rise to ruminate, two rams stayed with their fallen comrade. They pushed their heads into his side repeatedly. The ram didn't get up.
One of the rams, a black-face one, suddenly turned on the other helper ram and drove him off. Then he butted his head violently into the side of the fallen ram. He rocked that sheep, I'll tell you. Over and over the black-face slammed into the side of the downed ram. The ram started to rise. Black-face kept pounding him, but changed his position as the ram stumbled up. Now he butted from beneath, forcing the injured ram to stand.
The white ram, once on its feet, started to limp towards the rest of the ruminating sheep. The black-faced one walked at his side. I guess whitey knew he'd better keep moving if he didn't want another beating.
The last couple of days when we saw the injured animal, his limp had lessened. He was on the mend. We were relieved, not only that the sheep was better, but also that we didn't feel obligated to find and notify an owner. Sheep-sitting, I've decided, is not my thing.
There was a laundry behind a large shed door at the end of the row of cottages. I suspect that farm equipment had originally been kept in there, and that was why the wide double doors. It was now used for storage, laundering linens for the cottages, and as a laundry for the cottagers. A front-loading washer and dryer were under a counter. There was a rack of tourist brochures on the counter, and a phone on the wall for local calls only.
Friday had been designated as clean-the-cottages and do-laundry day. The day dawned gray and misty. The only change in the weather all day was when it actually rained. Lisa and I hauled our laundry down to the shed, separated it, and loaded the machine. That's where our usefulness ended. We could not figure out how to turn on the machine. Really. We pushed buttons, turned switches, and that machine refused to even gurgle. Amy appeared with her and Craig's laundry. Three minds were not better than two. We still couldn't make it start.
I kept fiddling with it, though, and finally the drum moved. Hooray! It circled to the right, and stopped. Well, that was helpful. Then it came to life and circled to the left. But the clothes looked dry. Where was the water and soap? We all bent down and watched through the round glass window. The clothes rotated right. The clothes rotated left. We thought they looked a little wetter. The machine door locked upon being started, and we couldn't open it to check. So we left the washer to its devices and went back to the cottages.
One by one over the next hour or so we went down to the laundry to see if the clothes were washed. The machine kept on rotating left, rotating right. Some time or another it did spin. We missed that part. The washer finally stopped and let us open the door after an hour and a half. The clothes were damp, so they must have been washed. Into the dryer they went. That machine we could figure out and soon it was tumbling the clothes dry.
The purpose of the washer's workings were for energy saving, probably. But if each washer load was going to take an hour and a half, the laundry wouldn't get done until Tuesday of the next week. I went back to do work at the cottage while Amy and Lisa stayed at the shed to do battle with the washer.
When we all met for lunch in Octavia, as usual, the laundresses announced they had a system. Amy had timed each cycle of the washer and written down the sequence. Then she developed a Plan of Washing. She placed her watch on the counter. She looked at it when she or Lisa started the machine. When X number of minutes had passed, she fast-forwarded the machine to the next cycle, finishing the whole washing process in a reasonable length of time. The clothes might not be sparkling, but they'd at least be cleaner than they were before. The dryer, too, was an energy saver. It generated less heat and took longer than we expected.
I went down after lunch to help. We had books to read, but it was pretty boring sitting in that dim,chilly shed. Josh crashed in and out the door a couple of times and was sent back to the cottages with armloads of clean clothes. He finally showed up with a pile of action figure toys and announced he was not going out again. He set up his army on the floor at the back of the room and had a war or two.
Then someone, I don't know who, not me, had a wonderful idea, a true brainstorm. Let's play cards! A couple of people hauled one of the little brown picnic tables from Portia cottage patio into the shed, others brought in some stools and chairs, and we had a game room. It was a bit tight. Some of us sat at odd angles and had to stand up occasionally to realign our spines, but Craig, Lisa, Amy, and I played euchre the rest of the afternoon. Craig and Lisa beat Amy and me six games to two.
Gordy filled in for a while when I went off to hang up some of the clothes outside that hadn't dried in the dryer. “Hang up” is saying it loosely. I draped damp clothes over the hanging pots and patio chairs. Amazingly, even in the grayness, they did dry. Periodically Amy laid down her cards and fiddled with the washer. Once Josh was sent home for Cokes. I wouldn't say the afternoon sped by, but we did have a lot of fun and the washing did get done.
The next morning, July 7, we were out in the driveway for one last time. The sun was shining. Arthur and Jenny backed in their cabs and loaded us up. We hugged them and took pictures. For one shot, we posed Arthur and Jennie standing side by side.
“The last time we did this was twenty-seven years ago,” quipped Jenny.
“And look what happened,” retorted Arthur.
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