Blenheim Palace

Trip to Blenheim Palace today.

After writing the blog on "Ice" this morning, I was interested to see this on the way to the bus station:

Now many Australians will not understand what this is. It's salt. "Why?" you ask. To melt the ice and stop people from falling onto their asses. It was all the way up the stairs and along the bridge to the train station.

The bus was a double decker bus and, of course, I sat up top. Much to my surprise, no one else sat up top with me. What I don't understand is how these buses manoeuvre their way around the narrow streets. Not only in town, but in the small country towns. It feels like the buses and cars are so close they could touch. Particularly going around corners. The streets were not designed for the traffic they take now. However, I am totally impressed with the skill of the drivers. At one stage, there was a bus lane and from where I was sitting, I couldn't work out how there was room for the bus in the bus lane let alone room for a car to pass in the car lane.

This was the view from the top of the bus

Now you tell me that a bus and a car will fit on that bit of road - well they did !!

Blenheim Palace is a large and monumental country house situated in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. It is the only non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title "palace". The Palace, one of England's largest houses, was built between 1705 and circa 1724. It was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blenheim_Palace

The entrance to Blenheim Palace

Most people drive and there are plenty of car parks. However, for those of us on foot, the entrance has a very, very long walk up. This photo was taken about 1/2 up after the kiosk where you pay.

This is an aerial view of where I walked. The push pin is about where the bus stop is.

Looks kewl from above, doesn't it.

The walk there, from the bus stop, wasn't too bad. I was fresh and ready to go. After walking around the grounds for several hours, the walk back seemed to take forever !!

These are the front gates:

My first impression was the grounds. At this time of the year, many trees are changing colour and the overall impression was STUNNING!! Far too big to be taken with a normal camera. All my photos simply give an overall impression.

Inside was incredible.  Very ornate as was normal for the times it was built and used. I'm glad they've kept the old stuff though. I wasn't allowed to take photos inside much to my disgust !! However, I do understand the reasoning and was not too upset. I bought a couple of postcards so hopefully will get them scanned tonight and include them.

The Long Library: Apparently the second longest library in the world. Books, books and more books. They are behind grills so they can't be touched or stolen. Down one end, there is an upper layer with a small verandah around it. I am still wondering just how those books were accessed. I'm figuring there was a door somewhere I couldn't see.

At the other end of the library, was an organ "In the Long Library the Willis organ, at the north end, was installed by the 8th Duke in 1891 and is the largest privately owned organ in Europe." http://www.blenheimpalace.com/thepalace/sundaymusic/

I guess I'm a book person and just the scale of the library impressed me. Imagine having that much room for that many books and in the same room, have a ginormous organ.

At one stage I caught up with a group who were taking one of the tours. I followed them for a while and then got bored with too much information so I went off on my own. I can only take so much of these places. Too much information.

I stopped and had something to eat - spicey parsnip soup - not very nice !!

This is the Water Garden outside the cafe:

It was quite dry looking. I suspect the greenery has lost it's summer flowers and general greenery. Or maybe not. Been browsing Google images and it doesn't look any greener. So maybe this is how it looks.

A couple of the statues around the garden:

Then went for a wander around the gardens again. Guess what I saw? These guys:

A ring necked pheasant. And here's his female counterpart:

There is a major difference between male and the female - I thought they were two different birds.

Pheasants are characterised by strong sexual dimorphism, with males being highly ornate with bright colours and adornments such as wattles and long tails. Males are usually larger than the females, and have longer tails. Males play no part in rearing the young. Pheasants typically eat seeds and some insects. While on the ground, a collection of pheasants is called a nye.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheasant

Sexual dimorphism is the systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species. Examples include color (specifically referred to as sexual dichromatism), size, and the presence or absence of parts of the body used in courtship displays or fights, such as ornamental feathers, horns, antlers or tusks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism

So now I've seen real pheasants, not just read about them in books.

This tree was incredible:

It is apparently a Swamp Cyprus and it really took my fancy. Behind, you can see The Cascades.

This is them. From there I decided to check out the stairs

When I got to the top, I realised just how tired I was and that any more exploring would lose it's interest. So I turned around and retraced my steps back to the palace.

On my way out, I found The Italian Garden which was closed and didn't take me to the exit. But I did take two more photos before I filled up my card in my camera.

This was in the middle of the Italian Gardens and the next one was one of the hedge sculptures which were all around the gardens.

Now how much work will that take to keep it in the shape. As you can see, the bird sculptures were all around the garden.

That's all for now folks. And I didn't get the scanning done this morning. Maybe tomorrow.

Madeleine

Thursday, 30 October 2008

Ice

Cold this morning. Has been cold the last couple of mornings and when M went out the other day, he rang to say that the car was covered in ice. I took a picture (of course), but it didn't turn out all that well. We had left it a bit late in the morning.

Today I went outside after M&K had left and got these photos.

How kewl is that?

That's ice on the leaves.

Off to Blenheim Palace today. Will update you on the day's events later I suspect.

Madeleine

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Abby Road

Last Saturday I needed to get out for a walk so decided that I would investigate one of the streets near where we live and see where it went, what it looked like and generally check it out.

I like this picture. The push pin is at the end of Abby Road and when I got to the end of the street, there was a sign saying that the path was closed. Well, i didn't even know there was a path there. So I walked back up the street, noticing differences in the houses.

At this point, the fronts of the houses changed for some reason. Even though they are still attached, they changed.

The sticking out bit for the front door suddenly disappeared and if you look at the next photo, the dormer window has disappeared (the dormer windows at the ones at the top on the sloping roof)

 

A bit further up the street there was a gap between the buildings, so I wandered through and came upon, you guess it, a path winding it's way along the river again. And there is it, you can see it in this map (I do like this program!!).

And you can see the path along the river !! When I came to the end of the alleyway, I saw this:

These are the famous English allotments. I didn't even know they were there. I hope this photo shows up on the blog. It is about 4 photos joined together which is why the funny edges.

Some lovely reflections in the water:

Some of the ramshackle buildings on someone's allotment:

My path along the river:

There were other people walking along as well. A man walking his dog. A woman with a child in a stroller. On the bridge, a man was contemplating the river. On the other side of the bridge, a group of young people were fishing.

They had fishing rods made from sticks. They were giggling and laughing and having a great time. I took this photo from a distance.

The other thing I spotted which will interest Australians were these critters.

For those of you who don't know, Australia only has black swans so many Australians would never have seen white ones.

This one found something interesting in amongst the embankment.

If you look closely at the earlier picture of the path, you can just see the swans in the distance.

Here's the map again, from above.

And here's the photo from the footbridge.

Damn, there's another bridge further down, and another path going under. Wait til I come back here and see what happens !!

I continued to wind my way down the path. Ducks bums

Flowers - daisies

There was a squirrel running through these trees and I was trying to catch him/her. Obviously I missed it, but did get the trees. One day I will get a proper photo of one of these little guys.

At this stage I was starting to get tired, and had no idea where the path came out so figured it was time to head back to an area I knew and knew how to get home. So I turned around and came back to the footbridge and the other path. I decided to go along the other path, and under the other footbridge, figuring I had a fair sense of where I was in relation to home.

Under the bridge I discovered these creatures.

 

It was so low that even I had to watch my head and a group of young people coming the other direction had to duck or they would have hit their heads.

Not a great photo, but does sort of give the idea.

When I came out, I had absolutely no idea where I was, and I hadn't brought my map. Damn!! I didn't really want to have to retrace my steps completely. It is always nice to go a different way home. Then I saw a sign to the railway station and I knew that once I found the station, I was almost home.

I did however, take one more wrong turn and spotted this:

This is the Oxford Canal I'm told. I've got no idea what the name of the waterway I'd been wandering is called. Maybe one day I will. In the meantime I will just have to hold my curiosity.

Map again. Where that pin is is about where I went under the bridge. It didn't feel that far as it looks in this map.

And this is where I ended up - Stable Close

I took a photo of the houses on Stable Close because they reminded me of where M&K lived when they lived in London.

That's all for now folks. I've really enjoyed putting in the maps this time.

Cheers

Madeleine

Friday, 24 October 2008

Botanic Gardens

Yesterday's trip was to the Botanic Gardens. I had a couple of tasks to complete on the way which meant another little wander through town. I must admit, I rather enjoy wandering the streets of Oxford. I'm still not sure what I like about it. Maybe it's the old buildings. Maybe it's the difference from what I'm used to. Maybe it's the weather. Who knows. And does it really matter.

I walked to a place called Shoe Lane - some lovely names they have here. Shoe Lane, Blue Boar Street, Beef lane, Ship Street.....

From there I wandered through the Clarendon Centre and out onto Queen Street. The nice thing now is that I've got a bit of a sense of direction on these main streets so when I came out, I knew which way I was going.

The next thing I spotted was this:

Now how kewl is that. A fence around the branch of the tree, and support for it.

This was the University Church of St Mary the Virgin

And there's the tree in all it's glory.

The church also has some incredible sculptures. The pigeons loved this one:

Again, the pigeons have found themselves a warm spot to rest.

And this appears to be a real gargoyle rather than a grotesque:

It took me several goes to take this one. My hand kept shaking while I was zooming in so I got bits of it. But I finally got most of the gargoyle. Isn't he gorgeous!!

Then at last, the entrance to the botanic gardens.

Now that's quite something. It's not really the way you go in. There's a new building off to the left which has a shop.

A close up of the top.

During my travels I found this:

And this sign said:

So I come all the way to the UK to find Australian plants in the Botanic Gardens. I also saw this:

Aren't they stunning. The tree:

And guess where this one is from:

Bloody Canada. For those of you who know me, that's where I was born. How funny is that.

I was particularly looking for English plants but found the map they gave me useless so I was wandering aimlessly not really knowing where to look.

I found these triffid looking plants.

Miscellaneous flowers

Cyclamens

Dahlia bud

And a dahlia. You can just see the bee in the centre. It's pretty much the same colour at the flower.

As I was wandering around the edges of the gardens. I spotted this:

Punts on the river waiting for someone to come and take them for a ride.

The bridge:

And the punts:

And the original purpose of the gardens (surprisingly the sign is readable):

By this stage I was getting hungry and running out of steam. I left the gardens and walked and walked a bit more. I finally decided where I was going to have my lunch and had a lovely Italian feed.

This was where I had lunch, on the corner of Pensons Gardens - that little lane between the buildings.

When I finished I realised how tired I was and how rotten I was feeling and grabbed a bus and headed home.

I arrived home feeling quite sick to find K at home in bed. Whatever I've got, she's got it too. So we spent the rest of the day curled up feeling sorry for ourselves and reading books. Still not the greatest today, sore throat and a bit achy so a rest day today.

Cheers folks. Maybe this afternoon I will write about another walk I did over the weekend.

Madeleine

Thursday, 23 October 2008