Seeing the Winter Lights at Christmas at Blenheim Palace

We have gone to a lot of winter light trails this year, but even as the Christmas season has ended, there are still some open! We wanted to go out to a Christmas market for dinner and see a light trail, so we made our way to Blenheim Palace. Dann and I went on a date night there a few years back and really enjoyed it, so we figured it would be fun to take our children as they don’t care about the longer drives. Blenheim Palace has a few features, all with different ticket prices. The market itself is free, but you can pay to go on the light trail, go inside the Neverland themed-palace and to go ice skating. After talking it over with everyone, they declared they didn’t want to ice skate or go in the palace, so we went for the food and trail.

Market Stalls at Christmas at Blenheim Palace

When you enter Christmas at Blenheim Palace, you first see the lights on the outside of the Palace itself. It also had a massive ferris wheel outside, but it felt separated from the other rides so we didn’t see many people using it. It is worth noting we paid for on-site parking as well, to get closer to the palace. The first area of the court yard had a few food stalls and more rides; swings, merry-go-rounds, and the classic huge slide. You can pay for tokens to ride these and we were sure Robin was going to be interested, but then we went into the next court yard which was full of ducks. If you know Robin, she loves ducks. So the fact that these ducks were all under the tables, looking to eat, completely distracted her from everything else.

We got some food from the food stands. Dann went for Pallela, Kai got pizza, Amelia and I got loaded fries, Robin also got Christmas fries. We had chicken burgers before we arrived, just in case there wasn’t food to our liking, but topped up on these sides and grabbed dessert too. Amelia and Kai got different crumbles, with Amelia’s cherry crumble being the best thing all night and Robin got Churros. Any food we didn’t eat Robin fed to the ducks, primarily from her hands. These ducks were so much fun, softly pecking at us when we sat still enough! There was plenty of seating within this area, for both us and the ducks.

Last time we came, there were far more gift stalls and we did end up purchasing a lot. There was also more food areas, but this year the ice skating rink took up most of the room, which was a bit disappointing. Dann and I had planned on grabbing a few things to take home, but as the stands were missing, there wasn’t a way to do so. In the food and ice skating courtyard, you can see Blenheim Palace, which is well decorated and has projections of lights happening on it – everyone loved looking at it!

The Light Trail

Once we had our fill, we moved on to The Light Trail. When you book tickets, you get a specific time, but if they aren’t too busy they will let you in early – which we wanted to do. The line itself was quick and we all found ourselves on top of a bit of a hill, seeing tons of lights ahead of us! This light trail is long! It took us over an hour and a half to make our way through the lights trail, with each area being different from the next. Everything seemed placed based on the songs. There were lots of stand out lets there, including a huge area that was full of birds in their own movement! We spent a lot of time looking at these birds and watching them light up in the way that they’d move around.

There were three different light tunnels at Christmas at Blenheim Palace; a rainbow tunnel, one with white lights, and one that had gingerbread cutouts. The gingerbread was our absolute favorite, but I think it’s because we had never seen that before. Another really impressive part of the trail was the massive light show on the water, with fountains spraying into the sky and lights behind it. We could also see a waterfall behind a bridge beyond it, which was beautifully lit as well. This was an area with food stalls and a bar, making it a beautiful place to stop and view the lights.

The water lights continued as we walked along the pond, which had a massive light on it and Santa riding against the trees. This was a fantastic water walk and all of the lights had made the sky a beautiful purpley-pink above us. There was so much to look at and we really liked all of the lights and sounds that matched. The gingerbread walk, complete with gingerbread songs, was fantastic! At the end, there was even fire in torches welcoming us out before we saw Santa sitting at his house. Christmas at Blenheim Palace is a fantastic family event and we were delighted to go this year! This ended up being Amelia’s ultimate favorite of the year and Kai’s second favorite.

Check out our list of the best Wintertime Lights Trails in England