Blenheim Palace & The Great British Cheese Festival

This past Saturday we went to Blenheim Palace. Blenheim Palace was built for and given to the First Duke of Marlborough for his services for England in the Battle of Blindheim (Blenheim) on the banks of the Danube on 13-Aug-1704.

Between 1796-1798, Robert Southey commemorated the battle by writing the poem "The Battle of Blenheim."

Before we even came to England I had seen that Blenheim was hosting the Great British Cheese Festival. The kids and I had been trying different types of cheeses over the past year or so I thought that this would be something fun to do. There was a British foods section where you could sample and buy foods ranging from sausage to brandy to snacks to black pudding...Yes we did try a sample of the pudding...It was unlike anything I had tasted before.

After making our way through those vendors and making note of particularly good items we went into the cheese tent. In this tent you could sample hundreds and hundreds of different cheeses from around Britian. We tried our best with to sample as much as possible. Afterwards we went back and got some blue cheeses (Olxford Blue, True Blue You, Wensleydale Blue Cheese) and some non-blue (Linconshire, Wensleydale with Carmelized Onions, and others....).... Hook Norton Brewery was there and had an old-fashioned beer wagon led by two Clydesdale horses. the funniest part was that the drivers were giving the horses some beer. The weather didn't cooperate very well so we went into the Wallace & Gromit theater tent which was showing W&G DVD's.

Afterwards we went up to the actual palace and took a tour of the main building. The great hall was simply amazing with its 65 foot ceiling. The library currently houses some 10000 volumes. Currently, the 11th Duke of Marlborough lives in the private wing of the palace.