Apart from the magnificent palace, there’s a railway, maze, lake and pleasure gardens, plus special events. Coming up: Masks and Mayhem, 23-31 October, a re-enactment of an 18th-century tale about highwayman Claud Duval.Blenheim Palace (0870 060 2080; ) open until 12 December, 10.30am-5.30pm, daily in October, Wednesday to Sunday in November and December The park is open daily 9am-4.45pm year round. Palace: adults £12.50, children aged 5-15, £7, family (two adults, two children) £33. Park and gardens: adults £7.50, children £3.50, family £18.Also try: Berkeley Castle (01453 810332); Bowood House and Gardens (01249 812102); Sudeley Castle (01242 602308).Best time-travellingStep back to the Roman era at Cirencester’s Corinium Museum, recently revamped to the tune of £5m. 42 Potter in pottery Prepare for Hallowe’en with your favourite Harry Potter stories, plus more spine-tingling Hallowe’en tales, at a reading in the Gladstone Pottery Museum on 27 October.Gladstone Pottery Museum (01782 319232; ), Uttoxeter Road, Longton, Stoke on Trent Open daily 10am-5pm The Harry Potter event takes place between 10.30am and 4pm Admission £4.95 adults, £3.50 children aged four-16 Family tickets cost £14 for two adults and two children. But as Mr Bee points out, it’s better to put money aside than not to.

So when Turner comes back in a year, people will be better prepared for him.”So what to do in the meantime?While the report will have jolted many out of their financial stupor, they might also think that with the financial services industry in a state of flux, this is no time to be giving pension firms their money. This makes a mockery of the current Pensions Bill heading for Royal Assent on 18 November, he adds.”Nothing that Mr Turner talks about is included in the [current] legislation – and it’s too late now to change anything.”That may be the case but it is the long term that really counts, says Mr McPhail – and this was given a huge boost by the thoroughness of the report.”People’s expectations have changed and that means some will start to address the problem. But this system is already up and running in Australia, and Mr Turner points out that household savings actually fell after its introduction.Once Mr Turner has made his recommendations, it will probably take at least another three years – it could even be as late as 2010 – before any course of action is shaped into law, says Mr Bee. Unfortunately, the cloud of uncertainty will linger for at least another nine or 10 months until he reports back with a set of recommendations next autumn.Many in the industry believe that, rather than a single clarion- call, his conclusion will be that we need a mix of a higher statutory retirement age, better incentives to save and greater taxation.Compulsion, a radical alternative forcing workers to save for their old age, is mooted in the report. The fourth alternative, the report points out is that, as pensioners, we simply become poorer.Mr Turner’s report was just the first part of a review by the Pensions Commission, which has the brief of finding a solution to the pensions crisis.

At this point, fewer taxpayers will be supporting a huge retired population.Faced with this problem, we will be forced to make one of three hard choices: either we save more, work longer or pay more tax for greater state pension support. “The real shock will be for consumers: people will be depressed, disappointed and confused.”The figures produced by Mr Turner, the chairman of the Government-backed Pensions Commission and a former director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, were breathtaking – notably, the finding that 12 million people aged over 25, half the working population, are not saving enough for their retirement.At the heart of the problem, the report says, are greater life expectancy and lower birth rates: by 2050, the proportion of British people over the age of 65 will increase from 28 per cent now to 48 per cent. “This is because of limitations on space, security risk and an ownership structure that militates against financing improvements,” says Mr French.. It seemed the end of the world was nigh last week as Britons faced up to the news of a grave threat to their retirement plans. The remaining network already offers the very services that the CCBS wants to introduce.Anybody with a basic bank account (for those who don’t want overdrafts) can already use a post office for simple over-the- counter transactions, as can regular current account customers of Lloyds TSB, Barclays, Alliance & Leicester, Smile and Cahoot.But the CCBS doesn’t think that the Post Office could be a “multi-bank substitute” for business and personal use.

This means it is likely very few people had used another bank other than the resident branch for many years.”Independently, the Britannia and Yorkshire building societies have shown that sharing can work. For three years, the two have let each other’s customers use their branches for basic transactions.However, the role of the Post Office in rural communities could remain a sticking point for the CCBS’s new campaign.Many sub-post offices have closed ­ and more are still threatened with closure ­ because benefit and pension payments now go straight into customers’ bank accounts rather than being dealt with over a post office counter. Too small and restrictive, it excluded urban areas and involved “no new thinking and no systems changes”, says Mr French.And tellingly, he adds, the banks failed to advertise the scheme in the target areas.”Furthermore, eight out of 10 of the areas had historically had only one bank. The idea was to allow personal and small business customers to use banking services through the branch of another participating bank in 10 locations across England and Wales. These included a Barclays branch in Coniston, in the Lake District; a Lloyds TSB in Donington, Lincolnshire; and an HSBC outlet in Cerrigydrudion, North Wales.The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) argues that an evaluation of the scheme, written by Professor Elaine Kempson, of the Personal Finance Research Centre at Bristol University, showed that each branch had an average of just eight personal customers and one business customer using the service each day.The scheme was also found to have had an impact on post office branches near the pilot sites, said a BBA spokesman.However, the CCBS claims it was unrepresentative since it was held in “10 untypical, remote rural communities”.