Message from Tony White's family

It is hard to believe that it will be two months tomorrow that we lost our dear Tony. On behalf of his family, Mary, Tania and Dominic, I would like to thank everyone we met from the Palace, for their kind words and assistance during this very stressfull time. I would also like to say things are getting better, but I'm afraid Tony was such a larger than life character that we are all still missing him terribly. However, it is a measure of the man's popularity that I am proud to say the Funeral Directors informed me this week that a total of £1,129.21p has been raised for the two chosen charities of Cancer Research (£424.71) and British Heart Foundation (£704.50). God Bless Tony and everyone who donated in his name.
Kind regards to you all Mike Lanaghan. (Tony's Brother-in-Law)

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Sorry lads

Often the frenetic activity which propels Blenheim Palace along is hidden nicely below the surface. The vast majority of visitors see a serene setting centred on a beautiful Palace and give minimal thought to the work going on "down below".

Today is NOT one of those times. Filming for Gulliver's Travels continues, creating a fascinating and unusual scene in the Courtyards - a scene which provokes a great deal of interest. On the Showground, the build for Art, Design and a Taste of Summer has started (this is a high end craft fair for the Spring Bank Holiday weekend which we are organising with Living Crafts - the same people with whom we run Living Crafts for Christmas). It will be a memorable show

We are very close to the build for the Blenheim Triathlon, which..... I am dissolving in shock as I type this..... is only THREE WEEKS AWAY. No panic. Nice measured breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

That's better. Until I think of the lake.

Roger File (our property director) and I started our lake practice about a week ago. I should point out that we are not cheating and using our own lake here. Oh, no. That would be against the rules (and we don't plan to break those rules until next week). For this, we borrowed a lake in North Oxford. I had a terrible time in our lake last year. All my planning went out of the window. I got kicked, dragged under, realised that the water was a funny brown colour, swallowed most of it, all in the first five seconds. Panic then ensued (and I mean real "I'm going to die" panic). I got colder, realised that I was all alone and that it was a very long way to the edge. I would have quit but I couldn't face admitting to people that I had dropped out after completing the first three metres of the triathlon.

Anyway, with Roger alongside me, it will all be different this year.

Jumping in the practice lake brought back all sorts of memories.

The first memory was about the cold. We really must look into heating the lake, Roger.

The second memory was triggered when I opened my eyes under water and saw my wedding ring slowly sinking in front of my eyes. I grabbed it and put it on the jetty. It is not normally loose but, as I suddenly recalled, when you jump into something THAT cold, your fingers shrink slightly. In fact every bit of you shrinks slightly (so my friends watching from the bank as I removed my wetsuit can STOP that sniggering - it's just nature).

Anything that I have gained in speed and confidence from last year has been more than offset by the complete loss of my sense of direction in the lake. The straight lake swim is hard enough without me attempting what appeared to onlookers to be a complete circumnavigation of the lake in question. I have a horrible feeling I will end up tacking along the Blenheim lake on the day.

One would like to think that one could rely on one's friends to shout a warning if they see one heading off the wrong way. You don't know my friends. I bumped into one, Richard King Smith, in the middle of the lake on a return leg. "Oh, you gave us such a laugh", he said, "the best bit is when you all started off together and you managed to head off at 90 degrees from everyone else".

Thanks Richard.

Roger is training well and he has, in my opinion, the clear advantage of actually being able to bike and run, which he denies but I maintain is a definite advantage in a triathlon in which you, well, swim, bike and run.

And we have more estate competitors (all like me, I suspect, doing it to avoid having to work on a very busy day).

Anita Donaldson, our Head of Finance, competes at a very high level. She is in hard training to try to qualify for the world championships later this year. Needless to say, I will not be comparing times with her.

Nick Bainbridge is another outstanding triathlete, and he works in our Rural Enterprise team helping lead the forestry work which is so defining of our park landscape. I don't think I will compare times with him either. I beat him by about a minute to the finish line last year, which pleased me immensely - pleasure only marginally reduced when someone pointed out to me that he had started one hour after me. Still, I do recall that he was out of breath from the strain of catching me. You ought to try training, Nick.

Two of our Maintenance team are taking part in the team event (Paul Loakes and Chris Monaghan) together with Rhiann Orsi, who is married to our head of Rural Enterprise. Paul, her better half, is too busy helping run the event to take part. He is one of those annoying folks who could probably just go out and do a triathlon without really practicing...

And Hannah "Buy One Day Etc" Payne, our Marketing Manager is also part of a team, although she had the good sense to look around at the athletic specimens on offer here and chose instead to team up with two non-Blenheim people.

Obviously I would like to beat any of them. Trust me, by the time I write up the results on this web-site, I will have beaten most of them. It's not so much the victor writing the history here, as "he who has control of the website" writing the history.

Sorry lads.

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What is going on out there?

I have to say (and I have a meeting coming up this afternoon which could change things) that it has been a pretty nice week.

We all had a fantastic time at Jousting over the May Day Weekend - a flood of letters from our visitors confirms this view is widely held. Over a quarter of our annual pass holders came over this weekend which is a great result. We know the car queues slowed you down but we are working on plans to sort this. With your help, we had roughly twice as many visitors at this event than last year.

The gloss was obviously taken off it by learning that many of our peers did just as well (btw did you spot the very subtle pun in there? oh never mind). National Trust are doing well with visits roughly doubled too. Our Treasure House friends are all reporting strong progress.

How annoying is that? We've worked really hard to attract more visitors. They could at least have the decency to report lower numbers than us.

It is one of the quirks of our "industry" that in many ways we are not direct competitors of our equivalents. For example, Chatsworth House is in many ways a comparable place to us but in reality no-one wakes up and thinks "I feel like going to a stately home, which shall I go to? Blenheim Palace or Chatsworth?"

All of this means that we do become good friends and tend to admire each other rather than anything else. We had a visit from our friends at Chatsworth this week, in which we feigned great pleasure at how well they were doing. In all seriousness, it's definitely a house worth visiting - if you enjoy Blenheim, you'll absolutely enjoy Chatsworth too. If you go, ask for Sarah Montgomery and tell her she should copy our "Buy One Day Get 12 months Free" offer. She'll like that.....

We are all getting out more. I think the National Trust article above explains some of this effect. Stately homes offer an awful lot, while the branded theme parks are very expensive (Futuroscope in France at Easter was great for all four of us but it was £200 all in). Annual memberships offer great value for money, especially for somewhere like an active stately home as there is so much to see, and it frequently changes through the year. As an example, our jousting tournament brought out 1 in 4 of our annual pass-holders as it was there for three days only (well, actually it is back in August).

It seems that while people are cautious with their money, they are prepared to work to get great value from UK visits.

It does also seem to be a stay-cation year, as they say. Many of my friends are planning either no foreign holiday or less than normal. The gain is felt by attractions like us. The UK is also cheaper to foreigners thanks to exchange rate movements but frankly if you are an insolvent American the fact that we are cheaper than last year in dollar terms is no comfort whatsoever.

The challenge for all stately homes is to ensure that this is not a one-year phenomenon. It is a challenge for which we are already planning.

Meanwhile, keep coming; the Park and Gardens look more stunning with each sun-filled passing day. And yes, Billy Connolly is still hanging around!

Four weeks until the triathlon - first lake practice on Sunday. It's all a bit too close for comfort.

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The days are just packed

Some of you may have come across a set of cartoon books called Calvin and Hobbes - a hyperactive and over-imaginative boy called Calvin and his toy tiger Hobbes who comes to life. The world through their eyes is full of excitement and imagination and adventure but they are occasionally dragged down to Earth by reality.

It often feels that way at Blenheim Palace; I think that the variety in one day here is one of its most interesting features, frankly, even if the pace of it does leave your head spinning.

Gulliver's Travels is being filmed here, today was a full filming day - of a game of basketball in the Great Court. The stars were out in force: Jack Black, Billy Connolly, Catherine Tate, Emily Blunt, the big bloke out of Gavin and Stacey. I'd like to make clear that I had heard of two of them (when your kids are into Doctor Who you pick up a bit). Jack Black's most notable role was as an animated panda (which John, in my defence, is why I didn't recognise him!)

For some visitors it was a bit disruptive, but for the vast majority it was very exciting indeed. As stars go, these were clearly good-natured and pleased to interact with their fans. I lost count of the number of staff and visitors who joyfully showed me photos on their phones and cameras of them posing with a star.

"I chatted up the Big Yin" one lady gleefully told me as we queued for an ice-cream (a nutritional requirement of the triathlon, by the way, OH MY LORD IT IS ONLY FIVE WEEKS AWAY, WHAT AM I DOING HERE WRITING A BLOG?) Back to the lady, she told me she was staying in a nearby caravan site, had got her free annual pass and would definitely be coming back. Several times. Sadly, I don't think they are filming this weekend, but she promised she would occupy herself with our jousting tournament instead. Nice Lady...

I trotted off to look at the jousting arena and infrastructure. They always put on a great show. For many parents though, the big appeal is that next to the arena is the Pimms "Silver Bullet". Be rude not to, really. We're lucky to have it this year, on the way in it took a wrong turn and got very stuck indeed. Our maintenance team, either through professional determination or a fierce unquenchable desire to drink Pimms, managed to get them back onto the right site. Heroes all.

It tends to be me who brings people back down to Earth. With some colleagues I went to RHS Wisley yesterday to meet some of the RHS team and compare some operating numbers etc. We were given a fascinating tour by the Curator and their head of fruit and vegetables (what a great job!). I could have spent a very long time wandering around those gardens. But we went to our meeting room and the spreadsheets came out. There was some very interesting stuff in there, and as the accountant in the room I soon got carried away.

Pointing at one set of figures, I blurted out "I'm really excited by this financial model!"

Their commercial director fixed me with a disbelieving stare.

"We've just taken you around one of the most inspiring gardens in the world and.... you're..... excited..... by...... the........ spread....... sheet." His voice dripped disbelief. I backtracked rather hastily. I like gardens as much as the next man, though the speed of our grass growth here at Blenheim is proving to be a bit of a problem. But our gardens team are manfully keeping up.

I stood marvelling at the pace of it with our Head of Operations, the unflappable Heather Carter. "I couldn't do this", I told her. "Trying to get my head around all of this and not panic." She grinned and pointed to a nervous looking photographer, master of ceremonies and a wedding planner standing at our Flagstaff entrance. "It'll be them not coping soon", she told me. "The bride-to-be is running very late...".

By the end of the day, order is restored. Filming is still going on (yes, they are late too) but the arena is built, the bride is married, the Pimms van is functional, the grass is shorter than in started the day and an awful lot of people have had a great deal of fun (with the possible exception of the driver of the Pimms Silver Bullet who had apparently had better days).

Tomorrow will be an even better day, I think. And the next day too.

Like I said, the days are just packed.

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