Come a foggy weekend in July we decided it was time to find a car and get out and about. First stop was Blenheim Palace near Oxford where the enterprising owners had decided to maximise their investment by staging some family-friendly jousting (complete with ooohs and aaahs, good guys and bad guys and some longbow archery practice). I didn't quite have my Maid Marian style down but I made a passable attempt to hit the target a couple of times.
On our way out we decided to visit the tombstone of the great man born at Blenheim Palace, Sir Winston Churchill, at his family plot in the small churchyard of St Martin's Church in Bladon - a little village right outside the gates of the palace. It is quite an unassuming place and made me like Churchill all the more.
Taking advantage of the car we headed off on the tourist trail towards Lacock - a village in Wiltshire which is owned almost entirely by the National Trust and as a result of which has been almost entirely preserved from the 18th century - with no power lines, permanent shop signs or aerials or anything signifying modern life. It features as the local village in Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth version) as well as many other period films and is a strange step back in time. The local abbey has also been used in a number of Harry Potter films (particularly as the Potions classroom for any very keen fans)...
Finally we had a bit of a dalliance with one of Wiltshire's white horses - the Uffington white horse - by far the oldest of the white horses carved into hills in the area and thought to date back to around 1200-800BC.
All in all a very pleasant weekend away and with a satisfying dollop of history thrown in!
M
