As you’ll know from a previous post we love Blenheim Palace and visit regularly with our annual pass. We were there on Thursday enjoying the sunshine in the Pleasure Gardens, digging for treasure in the sandpit, pretending to be real Monkey’s climbing over the wooden climbing frame and taking a leisurely train trip.
Twice a year over Bank Holiday weekend’s Blenheim Palace host a Jousting Tournament featuring ‘The Knights of Royal England’. It’s free for annual pass holders and we’ve gone at least once a year for the last 3 years. It’s great fun, even on the days when we’ve got soaked in the rain. The Tournament is running this weekend and as Daddy P has today off we decided to go with another of our NCT group families. The weather was great, we got a good pitch for our picnic blankets and all was good.
A new feature this year was Cadbury Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations Travelling Fun Fair. We left the Daddy’s and little J with the picnic spot and my friend N and I set off with my son and his buddy Mr B to investigate what this was all about. The queue was quite long for little people, caused in some part by a technical hitch with the registrations, but we got into the arena and joined in with the POP game – shout out POP to the funnels and eventually out pops some chocolate bars – the boys were impressed. At each challenge you got a stamp on your pass card and then could cash this in for some chocolate. Next stop after another queue was a ‘Step on the Lights to cross the path’ challenge. Mr B did brilliantly by himself, but my son wanted me to go with him – we did well. By then, it was past 12 o’clock and we’d missed the start of the Falconry display, my son was hungry, the queues for each of the challenges were long, so we called it a day and headed back to our picnic spot.
We watched the end of the Falconry display, we’ve been spoilt over the last two days, see previous post. We ate our lunch and then the fun really begun. The kids get to parade around the arena. The Knights have Jousting competitions against each other, have to catch rings with their jousting poles etc. My son really loved the Jousting Tournament, and kept clapping for the Red team – our Knights won so he was rather happy.
A great day out, we can thoroughly recommend it and we’ll be back for the next Tournament running between 2nd-4th August 🙂
I’ve been to a couple of jousting events in Blenheim, always fun. I used to work there as a palace assistant when we lived in Woodstock, nothing glamourous, but really loved it. Such a fabulous place.
It is such a gem to have on our doorstep. I never tire of it.