With the weather gradually improving and a couple of hours of sunshine I made my way to the grounds of Blenheim Palace again. The grounds were fairly quiet and the Palace seems to be in an in-between state being neither fully open or closed. Still, the up-side of that was that it was relatively easy to sit for a couple of hours sketching without too many people looking over my shoulder.

Above is a view across the lake to the Palace. There are some benches suitably placed to admire the view or, in my case, to sit and draw – and admire the view.

The Palace has also done a lot of work over the past year or so to improve this view and also to improve the extensive reed beds you can see in the foreground. As usual, Blenheim attracts a lot of geese and swans, as well as ducks, moorhens and the odd couple of grebes. This can all get a bit noisy at times, especially with the geese, but, on this occasion, I was more regaled with tales of teenagers discussing whether and how to get drunk or not.

I moved to another location on sloping ground, close to the Woodstock entrance to Blenheim where I settled down again to draw this view of the lake and Palace as the sun headed towards the horizon.

Here is the result.