Excerpts from the Travel Journal: Day Four--Blenheim and Cheltenham

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While arctacuda was showering, jlrpuck and I took another trip to the grocery store. We still had another DT play ahead of us, remember, and we needed to have nachos. Plus, arctacuda thought Nacho Man would grant me better dreams if we made nachos on his behalf. Nacho Man ended up allowing me to meet David Tennant-I call it “meet,” okay? So Nacho Man is benevolent. In his New Testament form.


We made it to the grocery store, where we promptly bought nacho fixings (“Could we be any more stereotypically American?” I asked) and also stuff to make a pot roast. And here is where we made this stunning discovery: The UK apparently does not have onion soup! Gasp of horror! People of Britain, do you know how awesome powdered onion soup is? It is a flavoring of the gods! It makes everything better! What sad lives you lead, with no late-night nachos or onion soup!

When we got back from our grocery store trip, it was to discover that Charlecote had been taken over by a classic car show, classic cars precariously pulled over to the side of the narrow drive, poking about the trees.




We collected arctacuda, and embarked on our drive to Blenheim.

Verity (ha ha ha!) wanted to take us to Blenheim the most direct route, which happened to be on little country roads. Because it would be dark when we returned and so we’d take motorways, we decided to indulge Verity (ha ha ha!) and take a country drive. The country was beautiful, although it looks a great deal like New England, its trees changing color. I remarked that I apparently prefer to visit places that look just like my home. Really, I think I am just looking for a place exactly like where I already live, only without my job.

Jlrpuck spotted a random mailbox on the side of the road, and that is where I darted out to send my postcards. Of course, being an idiot, I forgot to put the air mail stickers on them, so who knows if anyone will even get them…

We also continued to be challenged by the radio. For a station that plays no commercials, Radio One really isn’t terribly fond of playing any music.

We arrived at Woodstock, the town where Blenheim is located. Verity (ha ha ha!) was kindly insisting we follow her route, which was not following the signs to Blenheim. We ignored her in favor of the signs. AT OUR PERIL. (Incidentally, we don’t understand why you can’t program sat-nav systems to be more personal. Like, why couldn’t we have DT instead of Verity (ha ha ha!)? Or why couldn’t we program Verity (ha ha ha!) to say “Harumph ha ha ha!” instead of “Recalculating?”) Following the signs brought us to an entrance of Blenheim but not one where you could park a car. So we turned around and followed a smug Verity (ha ha ha!) to Blenheim’s automobile entrance.

I had wanted to go to Blenheim desperately ever since reading a book called To Marry an English Lord in junior high school. No, this book was not an instruction manual, alas, but was instead a fluffy social history about the wave of American heiresses who married British peers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I had always thought Jennie Jerome one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, and Jennie married Randolph Churchill, younger son of the Duke of Marlborough, whose family seat was Blenheim. Jennie’s more enduring claim to fame is that she was Winston Churchill’s mother. Winston was born at Blenheim, and much of the house is devoted to info about him.

Blenheim is enormous. Sure, I’m telling you it’s big, and I know you believe me, but it is enormous. It is almost impossible to get a feel for the scale of the place. I think it sits on something like 2,300 acres. We parked the car in a field and walked to the enormous front gate, which led us into an enormous courtyard, and we still hadn’t reached the palace. We paused for restrooms and also to check out the menu at the Orangery. However, the Orangery was closed for a private party, some sort of literature festival. October is apparently the month for literature festivals in the UK. I’ve never seen so much tweed in one place.

We walked through another set of gates into another courtyard, and there was the palace.




The palace looks out over a stunning vista, dotted with sheep, very idyllic,




and we took a bunch of photos before going into the palace proper.

Blenheim was a gift from the Crown to the 1st Duke of Marlborough in gratitude for his victory at the Battle of Blenheim, which took place in something like 1706 (if I’m remembering all this correctly). I have no idea which war this battle was connected with, and the palace never really told us. In fact, if I have any complaints about Blenheim, it’s that I didn’t learn enough about the palace itself. When I tour a house, I like to learn what rooms were used for what, I like to try to get a feel for what it was like to really live there. You can take tours of Blenheim, and maybe that’s where you learn all that stuff, but tours don’t run on Sundays, so we had to pretty much guide ourselves.

You enter Blenheim in a pretty fantastic entry hall. I think the ceiling was around 60 feet high. There was a string quartet playing, with a random French horn added in, and the acoustics in the place were phenomenal. You could hear that music all around the front hall and the corridors around it.

Much of Blenheim was dark, possibly to protect the interiors, and also because maybe dark woods were considered fashionable. We wended our way through the Winston Churchill exhibit, including the room where he was born, which was apparently a bedroom on the first floor, which I found interesting.

The Churchill exhibit gave way to Blenheim’s state rooms. The state rooms were actually pretty gorgeous and impressive, crowded with art. The art was mainly family portraits-with a random Sun King portrait in there-and my, can you tell a Sargent from all the rest. He’s so clever and soft and pretty, even if Consuelo Vanderbilt’s neck is truly alarmingly long in his portrait of her.

The last room the house tour takes you to is this gigantic library, and this was a phenomenal room. Two stories, with bookcases all around, and lined with windows, so it was pleasantly bright. It was painted this lovely peach color, with white molding accents,




and at one end was an enormous organ. Now maybe it’s overkill to have an organ this large in your house, and it is, but there was an inscription on it about how it was erected in memory of many happy times, and that is, well, sweet.

We couldn’t take photos inside the house, but we had to go outside to get to the next room, which was the chapel, so we chose to believe you could take photos in there.




After the house tour was completed, we were starving, so we went to the café, which was in the basement. Jlrpuck and arctacuda were out of cash, meaning, I guess, that I won in some sense, so I bought us the world’s most expensive meat pie thing, which is like shepherd’s pie without the corn. It was a nice, balanced meal, though, with some accompanying green beans and roasted potatoes. I also bought us a scone to share, slathered with Chantilly cream and some strawberry jam (which I’m totally okay with on a scone).




The scone was absolutely divine. It may have been the smartest food purchase I made on this trip (other than the nachos, of course).

We ate lunch on the terrace outside, which was packed with people enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. It was honestly so warm that even I took off my coat so I could bask in the sun. It seemed as if the terrace had not been bussed all day, so we consolidated our dirty dishes as best we could and embarked out into the gardens.

The garden nearest the terrace had a fountain going, so we took some pictures of that




before heading down toward the lake.




Jlrpuck spotted a sign for an Italian garden so we headed for that, completely underestimating how widespread the gardens are. We hit a charming rose garden




and decided to settle on that instead of the Italian garden, mostly because we were on a schedule and hadn’t realized Blenheim needed more time than we allotted to it. Naturally, it turned out that the Italian garden was right next to the house and we’d missed it entirely. Then, when we finally got to it, it was closed.




I don’t even remember what we were talking about as we walked along the gardens but I do remember at one point jlrpuck ended up in front of us, and arctacuda commented, “She doesn’t want to be seen with us. And can you blame her?” And I was like, “Yes! I’m here being us!” (This is not true; jlrpuck totally loved being with us. She especially loved it when arctacuda and I started singing everything as if we were in a musical. That was her favorite.)

We popped into the little shop, which had really a shocking lack of postcards, and then went back to Aloysius for the drive to Cheltenham Racecourse.




And why, you may ask, were we going to the Cheltenham Racecourse? Because jlrpuck, being both magical and awesome, had gotten us tickets to see RTD and JB speak at yet another literature festival going on (yes, they were all called “literature festivals,” not literary festivals).

Verity (ha ha ha!) got us to Cheltenham Racecourse without incident. Well, there was one brief incident, when wild animals attacked our Aloysius.

Click to view

By now we were hungry again but there was precious little to eat. I managed to score a cup of tea but the one food trailer was even out of coffee. We did get a free Sunday Times, so we grabbed it and took our seats in the auditorium. Great seats. Like, seventh row or something. We flipped through the Times, me begging arctacuda not to tell me anything about the election, while I played the scratch tickets that had come with the paper. We won, but you had to pay a lot of money to collect your winnings. SCAM.

Then RTD came out.




He was being interviewed by a Times reporter whose name was Caitlin but they pronounced it “Catlin.” Interesting. Is that the British pronunciation? Anyway, RTD was exactly as you’d expect: a great, giggling man. He had a lot to say about TV in general, including a bit of a jab at Primeval and the comment that he thinks there’s a story going on in Robin Hood separate from the actual story and not quite kid-appropriate. Ha! Yes! Unfortunately, there was a ton of kids at this event, which kind of cut down on the number of naughty stories RTD and JB could tell.

After a bit, JB came out as well, and they all chatted for a bit.




When JB and RTD laugh together, they sound like evil villains. I think my favorite thing RTD said was how he doesn’t worry so much about plot holes because he can patch over them with a sentence. Yes, Rusty. We can tell.

When JB and RTD were done, we did a Q&A session. Now it’s a bit weird to ask questions of a departing head writer, because he can’t really speak much to the show’s future. RTD did reveal that he knows the second-to-last line of his last special. I’m hoping it’s “What?” for old times’ sake. The questions also suffered from many of them being asked by children, so we got questions like “Who’s your favorite Doctor?” The whole tone of the Q&A session just seemed to draw it in a direction not conducive to the sort of deep writerly questions I would have liked. RTD and I could not have more different writing styles, and I really wanted to hear about it. The one question I really kind of adored was about DW’s appeal to women. RTD said something about women liking to watch strong female characters and then also adding, “Plus, I’m sure they like to watch David Tennant!” Yes. Other questions I wish had been asked at this Q&A: What do you think about DW in America? Do you purposely write so meta? How would you fix JE? Don’t you think Jack and Rose needed to have a conversation at some point? How often do the actors say a line differently than you heard it in your head, and what’s that like? Do you like pina coladas? The Love Boat theme. All in all, though, the talk was fabulous fun, even if the room was a bit hot. And for me to say it was hot, you know it was hot. And even if RTD wanted an absurd thirty pounds for his book. That’s, like, sixty dollars. As jlrpuck pointed out, RTD and I have Issues. I decided against buying the book and then getting it signed.

As we exited the auditorium, we randomly ran into lostwolfchats, together with her friend and her friend’s husband Keith (which is, according to RTD, the Doctor’s real name). We chatted for a while, and then we took off for home, debating what we were going to do about dinner. And lo! A McDonald’s appeared! Open and everything! We threw Verity (ha ha ha!) into a dither by reversing around the rotary to get to the McDonald’s. I enthusiastically ordered Chicken McNuggets, with ketchup-which, by the way, was five pence extra-but I did not get the ketchup because they didn’t hear jlrpuck order it as they were busy telling us they were out of an entire section of the menu. Chicken McNuggets with absolutely no sauce are not much fun, but the fries were divine.

We took the motorway home, and then settled in to watch TV. And that is when the World’s Largest Spider appeared. Jlrpuck tried to kill it first, but she is crazy and tried to kill it with, like, her hand holding some toilet paper. The spider fell off the wall and disappeared, only to emerge from under the TV several minutes later. Annoyed, I grabbed the National Trust guidebook and whacked the spider, violently, several times. I do not like bugs. We settled back down to watch TV-snooker; always snooker; I want to be the person with the white gloves who retrieves the balls-and jlrpuck, after a little while, said, “Um, EGT? The spider is moving.” I whacked the bloody thing even more violently, several more times, until it finally died.

After the drama of the spider, we made the best discovery ever. Baseball! The NLCS! Live from LA! Actually, it’s been kind of nice not to be going through all the Red Sox emotion, but it was fun to see baseball on British TV. It was just the Fox broadcast, so Tim McCarver babbling at me, but where Fox was showing commercials, we switched over to a studio where some idiot American was offering commentary, paired with a British sportscaster. Totally awesome.