As of April 2022, the price to enter Blenheim Palace stands at £31 per person, expensive even by the standards of the south of England. Whilst I found the interior of the palace and attending gardens impressive, there are few rooms inside that are available to the public as the palace is still occupied by the Duke of Marlborough and family, although photography is now allowed (at least nobody told me off for taking photos). Some further areas can be visited on guided tours for no extra cost but there is not much to see here that stands out over the many other stately homes scattered throughout the English countryside. Personally, I found the most impressive aspect of Blenheim to be the grand exterior architecture, created by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor from 1705 to 1722, and how it is set into what is now seen as a traditional landscape but, at the time, would’ve been an innovative design from the great Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Thankfully for the frugal traveller, it is possible to enter the core zone of this site and get great views of the famous palace for no charge at all. This is thanks to the fact that the grounds are crossed by a public right of way and so free access is enshrined in UK law. Starting from the village of Hanborough, which has a railway station on the line from London through Oxford to Worcester, I meandered my way through the picturesque Cotswold stone buildings then along narrow country lanes to reach a green gate outside the village of Combe (located at 51.8388, -1.3826). There is a small lay-by nearby where six cars were parked on the day of my visit with room for a couple more but I imagine the area fills up quickly on busy days. There is an equivalent gate on the other side of the parkland in Woodstock that is the other end of this free path, which I have not tried myself and so cannot comment on but the Combe gate was both easy to find and use.

Entering through this gate leads into a woodland that an information board says dates to the reign of Henry I and when I visited was full of pheasants, perhaps evidence it is still used for hunting. From there, a tarmacked road lead down into the more landscaped areas of the grounds. I turned off the road and along a mud and gravel path that follows the lake that forms the centrepiece of the park, across which there are good views of the palace and the grand bridge over the water. Just before the bridge is a Cedar of Lebanon tree that apparently played a starring role in the film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, behind which the Column of Victory dedicated to the first Duke of Marlborough’s victory at Blindheim in the War of the Spanish Succession, from which the name of the palace derives. I believe that the public right of way continues along the north shore of the lake and that crossing the bridge is only allowed with a ticket but, on the day of my visit, there was nobody checking tickets and it was possible in principle to walk right up to the front gate without paying a penny, although I had already purchased a ticket in advance online and there may well be more checking of tickets on busier days.

After touring the palace interior and formal gardens, I returned to Hanborough station via the charming villages of Woodstock and Blacon. Some of the palace’s most famous residents, including the American railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt (whose fortune helped restore the palace in the 19th Century) and Britain’s renowned wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, are buried in the cemetery of Blacon parish church in an unassuming family plot. It is a remarkably humble and quiet place for one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century to be laid to rest.