Blenheim Palace

Rahel's father and his partner Anna-Martin were in town this weekend and we spent Sunday at Blenheim Palace, the stately childhood home of Winston Churchill. Parts of the house have been well preserved with books, pictures and furniture in the places left by their owners, but others have been filled with wacky anamatronic scenes from the palace's past. The worst part of these displays was the recorded actor's impassioned pseudo-Shakespearian speech: the architect Vanbrugh's conservative and well proportioned architectural plan for Blenheim was described as 'Mad Vanbrugh's lurid dream!'

Afterwards we came back to Cuddesdon and had dinner at the Bat & Ball, Cuddesdon's cricket themed country pub. We were expecting sausage, potato's and fried fish, but instead got brazed lamb shoulder, Catalan fish stew and stilton-mushroom tarts. The food was really good.

Though Sunday was beutiful, today the skies above Cuddesdon are a dark grey, and we are awaiting what are supposed to be the most violent storms of the year.